Born with a Copper Spoon examines how the metal has been produced, distributed, controlled, and sold around the globe over the last two centuries. Fourteen chapters cover North America, Latin America, Europe, Central Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and Oceania. The world depends on copper and this book examines how we get it.
The book is now available from University of British Columbia Press.
Funding was provided by the Fate of Nations group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the group kindly hosted the workshop that the book developed from.
White Mineworkers looks at the globalised nature of mining and labour on Zambia’s copper mines. It follows the fortunes of the white mineworkers who migrated to the region and who became some of the most affluent workers on the planet. Affluence was underpinned by regular strikes and racial segregation as this highly mobile global workforce transformed itself into a white working class.
The book’s introduction is free to read and it even makes a sound when you flip the page. There’s also an Open Access version of the book available here.
You can learn more about the book in an interview I gave about it or by watching the discussion at the book launch in Leiden.
Reviews: South African Historical Journal, Connections,
The book is based on my doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Jan-Georg Deutsch, a kind and wonderful man who tragically passed away in December 2016.
Rethinking White Societies challenges the assumption that white society in Southern Africa was uniformly wealthy or culturally homogenous. Ten chapters by emerging and established scholars look at white workers and the white poor in Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The book is open access so all the chapters can be read online and downloaded for free.
Africa is a Country hosted a series on the book including an overview of the book by Danelle and myself and short essays based on some of the chapters.
Danelle and myself also did a short interview about the book with Voertaal.
Reviews: African Studies Review, Société suisse d’études africaines Newsletter,
The book and author workshop were generously funded by the University of the Free State.
Duncan Money 