Hopes for the radiated body: uranium miners and transnational technopolitics in Namibia

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Periodical article

Title:	Hopes for the radiated body: uranium miners and transnational technopolitics in Namibia
Author:	Hecht, Gabrielle
Year:	2010
Periodical:	The Journal of African History (ISSN 0021-8537)
Volume:	51
Issue:	2
Pages:	213-234
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Namibia
Subjects:	occupational safety occupational health miners trade unions uranium labour policy mining companies
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/40985071
Abstract:	This article explores the transnational politics of technology and science at the Rössing uranium mine in Namibia. During the 1980s, Rössing workers refashioned surveillance technologies into methods for trade union action. When national independence in 1990 failed to produce radical ruptures in the workplace, union leaders engaged in technopolitical strategies of extraversion, and became knowledge producers about their own exposure to workplace contaminants. Appeals to outside scientific authority carried the political promise of international accountability. But engaging in science meant accepting its boundaries, and workers ultimately discovered that technopolitical power could be limiting as well as liberating. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]