Survival and accumulation in Gutu: class formation and the rise of the state in colonial Zimbabwe, 1900–1939

Davis, Bradley R.; Döpcke, Wolfgang

doi:10.1080/03057078708708160

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…These patterns are rooted in colonial governance in southern Africa, whose policies turned Africans into laborers and migrants whom colonial society could exploit (Phimister, 1974). They did so by instituting a myriad of taxes—hut tax, dog tax, child tax, and so on—to force Africans to participate in the cash wage economy (Davis & Döpcke, 1987, p. 73; van Onselen, 1976). This system of taxation disarticulated Africans from their lands and homes (Phimister, 1974).…”

Section: Precarity: When “The Father Of Tomorrow” Is Too Thinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizens in uniform

Takabvirwa

2023

American Ethnologist

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Amid economic and sociopolitical turmoil in Zimbabwe, police roadblocks proliferated throughout the country, creating sites not only of extraction but also of citizen engagement. These sites show that sociality mediates policing, as police and policed together negotiate the precarities of living in the wake of crisis. Roadblocks are key to the performance of the state as such. Yet this occasions the very stage on which the state's failings are manifested, as officers are rendered highly visible and scrutable on the road—this visibility is central to sociality, in a mechanism of power that relies on enfleshing the system of policing by those through whom the state acts. Whereas conceptualizations of governance in Africa often take people as a corrupting element, here, the peopling of the system is central to its operation. Encounters at roadblocks invite a reconsideration of reified ideals of policing and power in governance, including reified concepts of disciplinary power.

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