Disputing the Machines: Scientific Management and the Transformation of the Work Routine at the Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga, 1918-1930

Higginson, John

doi:10.2307/3601332

Cited by 5 publications

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“…16 But suddenly there existed a large and rapidly growing component of skilled and semi-skilled African workers in the metallurgical and machine tool trades, who worked with little or no European supervision (Gouverneur 1971, 54-80). 17 On the other hand, white workers were insufficiently strong or shrewd to secure for themselves a job reservation act similar to the one pertaining to white workers in South Africa (Richardson and Van Helten 1984;Johnstone 1976;Higginson 1983). As a result, white workers became increasingly redundant.…”

Section: Industrial Expansion: Profits Versus Living Standardsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Bringing the Workers Back In: Worker Protest and Popular Intervention in Katanga, 1931–1941

Higginson¹

1988

Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des étud

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ResumeLa place du monde rural et des migrations du travail dans la formation de la conscience des travailleurs africains a ete depuis plus d'une generation l'un des themes dominants de l'historiographie de ]'Afrique australe. Plusiers monographies de valeur ant ete consacrees ii ce suiet. Et pourtant, contrairement ii leurs homologues qui etudient ce probleme dans d'autres regions du monde, les historiens du travail en Afrique astrale arrivent difficilement ii expliquer le lien entre la conscience ouvriere et les difjerentes strategies de lutte ouvriere. Get article analyse cette demiere question ii travers l'exemple de la lutte des travailleurs des mines du Katanga entre 1931 et 1941. L'auteur conclut que l'experience analysee demontre l'impossibilite de comprendre la place du travail migrant et du monde rural dans la conscience des travailleurs miniers sans tenir compte de la contrainte que la domination coloniale imposait ii la production industrielle.

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Section: Industrial Expansion: Profits Versus Living Standardsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Bringing the Workers Back In: Worker Protest and Popular Intervention in Katanga, 1931–1941

Higginson¹

1988

Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des étud

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“…UMHK spearheaded stabilisation from early on and, from the early 1920s, actively encouraged the creation of a disciplined permanent urban workforce that would have reproduced with less need for migrant labour. African migration from other areas of the Congo, the Belgian possessions of Urundi-Rwanda, and what the Belgians called the 'Rhodesias' (Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi) remained significant throughout the colonial period (Higginson 1988a(Higginson , 1988b. The Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt followed a trajectory that was closer to Katanga than South Africa.…”

Section: The Establishment Of Colonial Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The imposition of capitalist production regimes was accompanied by resistance and repression. Higginson's history of the UMHK highlights how the state apparatus punished workers resisting attempts at incorporation into the alienating bureaucratic structures of the mines (Higginson 1988a(Higginson , 1988b(Higginson , 1988c. Across the region, waves of spontaneous workers' strikes and urban protests were brutally quashed, often with large numbers of African casualties (Epstein 1958;Higginson 1988aHigginson , 1988bHigginson , 1988cNzongola-Ntalaja 2002;Feinstein 2005).…”

Section: The Establishment Of Colonial Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraction and beyond: people’s economic responses to restructuring in southern and central Africa

Laterza

Sharp

2017

Review of African Political Economy

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People's economic activities in southern and central Africa have undergone major transformations in the last three decades, influenced by significant structural changes in the configurations of big capital and state-capital relations. The focus of this edited collection is on people's economic responses to restructuring in the three mining centres of South Africa, the Zambian Copperbelt and Haut-Katanga, DRC. There is a growing interest in comparing the central African Copperbelt, but, to our knowledge, there has not been any systematic comparison of these three interconnected mining systems. 1 By 'mining system' we mean a specific historical configuration that developed from the interactions, negotiations and conflicts between mining capital, colonial powers, colonised polities, migrant and local labour, and local communities. While capital was internationalised from early on, the forms of state-capital relations that emerged in the three locales shaped them into separate, albeit interconnected and open-ended, systems. Mining companies competed over labour, with African migrants and their families often moving across these areas, but also capital and international markets. Dynamics of competition and cooperation also occurred between the different colonial states. While these systems developed their own specificities, the original goal of conquest for extraction of raw materials destined to the metropolitan markets was common to all three configurations. These processes produced massive displacements and large-scale disruptions of existing economic activities (including mining), international trade, and migration routes. As a heuristic device, we selected articles that study people's economic activities in various geographic areas directly linked to the three mining systems. We included urban mining centres as well as rural labour-sending areas from within and outside the mining countries' national borders. In sectoral terms, we kept the focus as broad as possible, trying to provide some analysis of: how large-scale mining and its institutions have changed over time (Stewart and Nite, Macmillan, and Uzar, in this issue); how people residing in urban mining centres and formerly employed in large-scale mining moved to other economic activities (Rubbers, in this issue); how artisanal mining developed alongside the decline of largescale mining (Cuvelier, in this issue); and how rural sending areas fared with the drastic reduction of mining employment (Johnson, and van der Waal, in this issue). Most of the articles in this special issue are contemporary ethnographic case studies, rooted in an awareness of the political economy of the region and engaging to varying extents with the history of the three mining systems. Different scales are at work herefor example, while one article engages with the changes in the configurations of big capital and state-capital relations in South Africa (Macmillan, in this issue), another is a national case study of mining trade unions in times of privatisation in Zambia (Uzar, in this ...

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“…This introduced a new mode of power: sovereign coercion was complemented with disciplinary power, thereby increasing the depth of governance interventions 43 . In the spirit of such new technologies of power, described by Foucault for Europe 44 , colonial state and company governmental interventions intensified, aiming at the production of permanent wage labour 45 . The UMHK "sought to reach further under the workers' caps while tying their hands more fastly to new pacesetting machinery 46 ", by combining control with paternal welfare provision in the cités minières: settlements exclusively for workers and their families.…”

Section: Governing Pockets Of 'L'afrique Utile' In Katanga 1890 To Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

New political topographies. Mining companies and indirect discharge in Southern Katanga (DRC)

Hönke

2011

Politique Africaine

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Nouvelles topographies politiques. Entreprises minières et décharges indirectes au Sud du Katanga (RDC) Cet article entend analyser les reconfigurations actuelles du système politique en Afrique en étudiant la manière dont les multinationales gèrent la sécurité dans les régions minières de cuivre et de cobalt au Sud du Katanga (République démocratique du Congo – RDC). Ce texte cherche à démontrer que l’extension du rôle des entreprises dans la gestion du système politique au Sud du Katanga peut être interprétée comme une nouvelle forme de décharge indirecte effectuée par le pays d’accueil et par le pays d’origine de l’entreprise multinationale, pour externaliser, en grande partie, la gouvernance locale. Cela suggère des topographies politiques qui diffèrent de celles de la gestion de la sécurité par les entreprises au xix e et xx e siècles.

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Disputing the Machines: Scientific Management and the Transformation of the Work Routine at the Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga, 1918-1930

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Bringing the Workers Back In: Worker Protest and Popular Intervention in Katanga, 1931–1941

Bringing the Workers Back In: Worker Protest and Popular Intervention in Katanga, 1931–1941

Extraction and beyond: people’s economic responses to restructuring in southern and central Africa

New political topographies. Mining companies and indirect discharge in Southern Katanga (DRC)

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