Africana Periodical Literature 
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| Title: | Class Consciousness among the Zambian Copper Mines, 1950-1968 |
| Author: | Parpart, Jane L. |
| Year: | 1987 |
| Periodical: | Canadian Journal of African Studies |
| Volume: | 21 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 54-77 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Zambia |
| Subjects: | class consciousness miners Labor and Employment Economics and Trade Ethnic and Race Relations Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/485086 |
| Abstract: | The behaviour of the Zambian copper miners during the 1950s and 1960s had led many scholars writing on the Copperbelt to question the class or political consciousness of the Zambian miners. The African Mineworkers' Union frequently refused to cooperate, either with other workers in the Congress of Trade Unions or with the African nationalist political parties. In an effort to explain this behaviour, most scholars have accepted A.L. Epstein's conclusion that the special nature of work and life on the mines created an industrial parochialism which obscured a wider consciousness and the need for class-based political action. Only M. Burawoy questions this assumption, maintaining the paramountcy of class interests among the miners. Adopting Burawoy's position, this article suggests that the miners' initial withdrawal from politics was largely circumstantial and did not impede awareness of the emerging class structure. Subsequent uncooperativeness was more the result of the miners' opposition to growing class inequities than a rejection of political action. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in French. |
