Research Seed Grant | 2007-2008

New Narratives of the Underground: The Transformation of History in South Africa's Gold Mining Communities

by Rosalind Morris (Anthropology)

This project aims to generate a broad set of formally recorded oral histories, documenting the recollections of two interrelated histories in Merafong, a gold mining municipality near Johannesburg where are located the deepest gold mines in the world. These histories concern the changing experience of underground mining in an economy that is defined by the precariousness of gold's valuation on the international market as well as the extremely dangerous nature of the industry, and the shifting place of this community in the changing struggles between the state and organized labor and other, non-governmental actors as South Africa moves into the second decade of its transition to democracy.