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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Invention of the 'Tropical Worker': Medical Research and the Quest for Central African Labor in the South African Gold Mines, 1903-36
Author:Packard, Randall M.ISNI
Year:1993
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:34
Issue:1
Pages:271-292
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:miners
labour recruitment
labour migration
gold mining
occupational health
Labor and Employment
Ethnic and Race Relations
History and Exploration
Health and Nutrition
Bibliography/Research
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/182429
Abstract:In 1903 South Africa's mining industry began recruiting African labour from Central Africa in order to shore up its labour supplies. From the outset, Central African recruitment was problematic, for Central African mine workers died at very high rates. The primary source of Central African mortality was pneumonia. In response to this high mortality the Union government threatened to close down Central African recruitment, a threat which they carried out in 1913. From 1911 to 1933, the mining industry fought to maintain, and then after 1913 to regain access to Central African labour. Of central importance in this struggle were efforts to develop a vaccine against pneumonia. While the mine medical community failed to produce an effective vaccine against pneumonia, the Chamber of Mines successfully employed the promise of a vaccine eventually to regain access to Central African labour in 1934. The mines achieved this goal by controlling the terrain of discourse on the health of Central African workers, directing attention away from the unhealthy conditions of mine labour and toward the imagined cultural and biological peculiarities of these workers. In doing so the mines constructed a new social category, 'tropical workers' or 'tropicals'. The paper explores the political, economic and intellectual environment within which this cultural construction was created and employed. Notes, ref., sum.
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