Blair Rutherford, professor of Anthropology and former director of the Institute of African Studies at Carleton, has a new book published with Indiana University Press.
Farm Labor Struggles in Zimbabwe: The Ground of Politics examines the unequal social and power relations shaping the lives, livelihoods, and struggles of some of the farm workers during a momentous period in Zimbabwean history, the early twenty-first century when white-owned farms in Zimbabwe were subject to large-scale occupations in an increasingly violent struggle concerning national electoral politics, land reform, and contestations over democracy. His analysis shows that there was far more in play than political oppression by a corrupt and authoritarian regime and a movement to rectify racial and colonial land imbalances, as dominant narratives would have it. Instead, he reveals farm worker livelihoods, access to land, gendered violence, and conflicting promises of rights and sovereignty played a more important role in the political economy of citizenship and labor than had been imagined.