Unstable Ground

The Lives, Deaths, and Afterlives of Gold in South Africa

Rosalind C. Morris (Professor, Columbia University)

$215.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Columbia University Press
04 March 2025

African history; Mining industry

What has gold done to people? What has it made them do? The Witwatersrand in South Africa, once home to the world's richest goldfields, is today scattered with abandoned mines into which informal miners known as zama zamas venture in an illicit-often deadly-search for ore. Based on field research conducted across more than twenty-five years around these mines, Unstable Ground reveals the worlds that gold made possible-and gold's profound costs for those who have lived in its shadow and dreamt of its transformative power.

From the vantage point of the closure of South Africa's gold mines, Rosalind C. Morris reconsiders their histories, beginning in the present and descending into the pasts that shaped them. Anchored in evocative descriptions of mining in the ruins, this book explores the social worlds built on gold and the lives that were remade and sometimes undone by the industry over a century and a half. Viewing this industry from its margins, against the backdrop of the cyanide revolution, the gold standard's demise, and recurrent sinkholes, as well as the insurrectionary protests and violence that continue to this day, it recasts the history of South Africa and the incomplete effort to overcome apartheid amid the transformations of the global economy. In writing that is by turns immersive, incisive, and poetic, Morris unearths a history that was born of imperial aspiration and that persists as a speculative mirage. Interweaving ethnography, history, personal testimony, and political thought with striking readings of South African literary texts, Unstable Ground is a work of extraordinary ambition and depth.

By: Rosalind C. Morris (Professor Columbia University)
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780231216111
ISBN 10: 0231216114
Pages: 656
Publication Date: 04 March 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Rosalind C. Morris is professor of anthropology at Columbia University. A writer, cultural critic, and documentary filmmaker, she has received numerous awards for her scholarly and artistic work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Reviews for Unstable Ground: The Lives, Deaths, and Afterlives of Gold in South Africa

Morris offers an ethnography that captures astutely and illuminatingly the stubborn fiction that there is such a thing as a distinction between the formal and informal sectors of the economy, between the normal and abnormal modes of existence in southern Africa’s political economy. This is all one economy. The haves and the have-nots inhabit one world. Different for sure but one. -- Jacob S. Dlamini, author of <i>The Terrorist Album: Apartheid’s Insurgents, Collaborators, and the Security Police</i>