Unstable Ground - The Lives, Deaths, and Afterlives of Gold in South Africa

Based on field research conducted across more than twenty-five years around abandoned mines in South Africa, 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.

List of contents

Preface: Ground—Preliminary Definitions
A Note on Orthography and Capitalization
1. Clearing Ground
Part I. Groundwork
2. Letters, Ruin: Migrancy’s Remainders
3. Gold Fools: Or, What Is a Gold Rush?
4. Cyanide Dreams and the Redemption of Waste: Or, Snowballs in Hell
5. “We’re Ground Underfoot”: Movements Without Mobility
6. Down, in Africa: Women Surpassing Protest
Part II. The Deep
7. Figure, Ground, and Sinkhole
8. The Sky’s the Limit: Visions and Divisions of the World
9. Utopia on the Highveld
10. Good as Gold: Standards and Margins of Value
11. Catalytic Conversions: Becoming Organized
12. Go Underground: Or, When Was Youth?
13. Zombies Sing Pata Pata: The Impossible Subject of Political Violence
Part III. Surfacing
14. Terrain of the Fetish: Dislocations Relocations, and the Difficulty of Moving On
15. Rush, Panic, Rush: A New Book of the Dead
16. Magic Mountain: Debt and the Ancestors
17. Gambling on Gold Again
18. Afterward, Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

About the author

Rosalind C. Morris

Summary

Based on field research conducted across more than twenty-five years around abandoned mines in South Africa, 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.

Product details

• Authors: Rosalind C. Morris, Rosalind C. (Professor Morris, Morris Rosalind C.
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 25.02.2025
• EAN: 9780231216128
• ISBN: 978-0-231-21612-8
• No. of pages: 656
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Economics; History, HISTORY / Social History, HISTORY / Africa / South / Republic of South Africa, HISTORY / Africa / South / General, Extractive industries, history; business & economics