Call for Papers: A History of Consumption and Social Change in
Central Africa, 12/09
A History of Consumption and Social Change in Central Africa, 1840 – 1960, Lusaka:
IBIS Gardens 26 – 28 August 2010
Native Commissioner Melland, stationed at Fort Roseberry (Mansa) in the early 1900s
noted that the majority of young men in his district had crossed over into the Belgian
Congo to work on the mines there, and that the bulk of their earnings were spent with the
trader and labour recruiter Macdonald, who maintained a store at Madona. In the early
1930s, a report tabled before a missionary conference on the effects of industrialisation
upon "Bantu society and the work of missions" included an itemised list of the baggage
contents that miners were taking home with them at the end of their contracts on the
Central African Copper mines. Apart from bicycles, hats and shoes, the goods listed
included phonographs, paper, ink, pens and women's frocks and dresses.
Within the research programme, From Muskets to Nokias: Technology, Consumption and
Social Change in Central Africa from Pre-Colonial Times to the Present, a number of
related projects are engaged in rewriting the history of the Zambian and Congolese
copperbelts and their hinterlands through the lenses of technology and consumption, and
their relations to social organisation. The programme's main contention is that by
portraying rural Africans as mere pawns in the impersonal clash between Capital and
organized labour, materialist interpretations of the region's history have obscured the
full range of social experiences of Central African peoples. In this consciously social
historical programme, the research projects attempt to move away from a teleological
narrative of oppression and exploitation with a view to reinstating the African in the
position of independent economic agent-independent economic agents engaged in the
domestication of material products of the industrial world, be they pens and paper or
phonographs and bicycles.
The conference to be held in Lusaka in August 2010 will provide a platform for
contributions that seek to explore and expand upon the consumption of, and the concomitant
social change engendered by, the material products of the industrial world in Central
Africa. That is, the conference is specifically interested in papers that seek to put the
material, in this instance the products of industrial technology, back into the history
and social context of Central African societies in the period between 1840 and 1960. The
conference seeks contributions that deal with one or more of the following aspects
relating to consumption and social change in Central Africa: the origins of Central
Africa's engagement with the products of industrial technology in the era of the
pre-colonial long-distance trade; the reorientation of the Central African economic system
in the first quarter of the 20th century as a result of the growth of new socio-economic
networks revolving around the industrial mining complexes of southern Katanga and the
Zambian Copperbelt; the relationship between labour migrants and pre-colonial political
elites; and, finally, the relationship between labour migrancy and the emergence of new
notions of wealth and forms of consumerism.
Abstracts in keeping with the conference theme and of no more than 800 words are
invited to be submitted by 1 December 2009.
Conference papers are due 30 June 2010.
A conference fee of $50 will be charged, this is exclusive of the accommodation and
food costs.
All conference correspondence is to be through the local conference organiser: Dr.
Marja Hinfelaar
marjahinfelaar@gmail.com
Organising committee:
R.J. Ross
J.B. Gewald
G. Macola
Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.