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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The 'Picaninny Wage'. An Historical Overview of the Persistence of Structural Inequality and Child Labour in South Africa |
Author: | Levine, S.L. |
Year: | 2006 |
Periodical: | Anthropology Southern Africa |
Volume: | 29 |
Issue: | 3-4 |
Pages: | 122-131 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | child labour social history Labor and Employment Economics and Trade Law, Human Rights and Violence Ethnic and Race Relations colonialism History and Exploration |
Abstract: | This paper considers the recruitment of children and youths in colonial and postcolonial South Africa. It explores the early legislation that transformed the nature of childhood in precolonial South Africa, and contributes to emerging scholarship on social constructions of childhood. The paper draws attention to historical shifts and continuities in the nature of child labour, and in relation to economic exploitation, racial oppression and childhood agency. Spanning the eras of precolonial relations of production, child slavery in the 1600s, and children's work under colonial rule in the mining, domestic service, and agricultural industries, the paper considers the differential configurations of the labour demands of children. Working against the tendency to regard child labour as a sentimental human rights issue, the paper provides a critical perspective against which to focus on contemporary debates about the rights of children in postapartheid South Africa, and redress the participation of children in processes of total social reproduction. Bibliogr., notes., sum. [Journal abstract] |