Physical Fitness and Economic Opportunity in the Bechuanaland Protectorate in the 1930s and 1940s

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Periodical article

Title:	Physical Fitness and Economic Opportunity in the Bechuanaland Protectorate in the 1930s and 1940s
Author:	Livingston, Julie
Year:	2001
Periodical:	Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:	27
Issue:	4
Period:	December
Pages:	793-811
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Botswana Great Britain
Subjects:	colonialism labour recruitment health History and Exploration Economics and Trade Development and Technology
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/823414
Abstract:	This article explores changes in the meanings of able-bodiedness in Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana) in the 1930s and 1940s from a number of vantage points. In this period, Tswana ideas about able-bodiedness were increasingly determined in relation to industrial ideas about African labour. The article argues that physical fitness took on new meanings as Tswana notions of male social and economic identity became increasingly dependent upon the ability to obtain industrial employment, and as British evaluations of their Tswana subjects followed suit. The discussion focuses on mine medical examinations, which had become the principal gateway to wage employment. Notes, ref., sum.