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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Remembering work on the Tazara railway in Africa and China, 1965-2011: when 'new men' grow old
Author:Monson, JamieISNI
Year:2013
Periodical:African Studies Review (ISSN 1555-2462)
Volume:56
Issue:1
Pages:45-64
Language:English
Geographic terms:Tanzania
Zambia
China
Subjects:rail transport
railway workers
memory
External link:https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2013.5
Abstract:In China, Tanzania, and Zambia, state officials participate in an ongoing articulation of official memory of the TAZARA railway project of the 1970s. In high-level diplomatic relations, the TAZARA project and its construction workers are continually held up as a foundational legacy for China-African development cooperation and friendship. However, the now-retired workers who built the railway tell very different kinds of stories about their experiences. In the context of recent economic liberalization policies, retired TAZARA workers draw on individual and collective memories of railway building to achieve both recognition and material security in a world in which they feel forgotten. They seek resolution of their grievances in old age through the telling and retelling of narratives of their youth. By doing so, they claim their own right to remember in the face of ongoing official efforts to reinvent heroic pasts. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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