Articles · Vol. 31 No. 1 (2006): Africa Development

‘Spaces of Resistance’– African workers at Shoprite in Maputo and Lusaka

DOI: 10.4314/ad.v31i1.22249

  • Darlene Miller
    Darlene Miller
    Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.
    Their articles →
Vol. 31 · 2006 No. 1 Africa Development AD

Abstract

South Africa’s reintegration into Southern Africa since 1994 has opened the way for renewed investments by South African firms in African countries. New shopping malls are one visible impact of this post-Apartheid development. This article is about the regional claims and the regional resistance of workers at the foreign branches of Shoprite, a South African retail multinational. Two shopping mall workplaces of Shoprite in Zambia (Manda Hill) and Mozambique (Centro Commercial) are the case studies for this analysis. The paper compares the experiences of retail workers at Shoprite, a South African food supermarket chain and Africa’s largest retailer, in two cities – Maputo, Mozambique and Lusaka, Zambia, exploring the variations and similarities in the responses of workers to their South African work environments. While Zambia’s ‘expectations of modernity’ have led to disillusionment, Mozambican workers accept South African investment as a necessary phase of Mozambique’s recovery. I argue that a new regional moment is shaping the workplace experiences of African workers, opening up a new ‘space of hope’ in the region. South African retail multinational corporations are important agents of a new regional imagination amongst retail workers in post-Apartheid Southern Africa.

Statistics

Abstract views
303
Downloads
79

Citations

16 citations

See citing publications Google Scholar

Citations counted by OpenAlex, an open index of scholarly literature, updated weekly. Google Scholar may count more.

Author Biography

  • Darlene Miller

    Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

References

  1. Arrighi, G., Silver, B., and Brewer, B., 2003, ‘Industrial Convergence and the Persistence of the
  2. North South Divide’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 38, 1, pp. 3 31.
  3. Bergquist, C., 1984, Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and
  4. Colombia, California: Sage.
  5. Berlanstein, L.R. ed., 1993, Rethinking Labor History, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
  6. Chakrabarty, D., 1989, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
  7. Clarke, M., 2000, ‘Checking Out and Cashing Up’, Paper presented to the Trade and Industry Policy
  8. Secretariat, Muldersdrift, Annual Forum;
  9. Co per, F., 1996, Decolonization and African Society. The Labor Question in
  10. French and British Africa, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
  11. Harvey, D., 1999, Limits to Capital, New York: Blackwell.
  12. Harvey, D., 2003, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hirschman, A.O., 1981, ‘The
  13. Changing Tolerance for Income Inequality in the
  14. Course of Economic Development’, in Essays in Trespassing, Cambridge University Press.
  15. Kenny, B., 2001, ‘We Are Nursing These Jobs: The Impact of Labour Market Flexibility on South
  16. African Retail Sector Workers’, in In: N. Newman, J. Pape & H. Jansen (eds). Is there an
  17. alternative? South African workers confronting globalisation, Cape Town: Ilrig.
  18. Kenny, B. and Webster, E., 1998, ‘Eroding the Core: Flexibility and the Re- Segmentation of the
  19. South African Labour Market’, Paper presented at the XIVth World Congress of Sociology,
  20. International Sociological Association, Montreal, 26 July–August.
  21. Kenny, B., 2003, ‘Work Restructuring in Food Retailing: the Long Transition to A Market Hegemony’,’
  22. Paper presented at the Wolpe Seminar, Johannesburg, 24–26 June.
  23. Miller, D., 2005, ‘New regional imaginaries in post-Apartheid Southern Africa – retail workers at a
  24. shopping mall in Zambia’, in The Journal of Southern African Studies, 31(1), pp.117-145.
  25. Perrot, M., 1986, ‘On the Formation of the French Working Class’, in I. Katznelson and A. R.
  26. Zolberg, eds., Working Class Formation. Nineteenth Century Patterns in Western Europe and the
  27. United States, New Jersey, Oxford: Princeton University Press, p. 97.
  28. Rees, R., 1997, ‘Flexible Labour: Meeting the Challenge’, South African Labour Bulletin, 21, 5.
  29. Sewell, W., 1993, ‘Toward a Post Materialist Rhetoric for Labor History’ in Berlanstein, ed.,
  30. Rethinking Labor History, pp. 15-38.
  31. Silver, B., 2003, Forces of Labor, Workers,‘ Movements and Globalization since 1870, Cambridge:
  32. Cambridge University Press, pp. 22–23.
  33. Simon, D, 2001, ‘Trading Spaces: Imagining and Positioning the A New South Africa within the
  34. Regional and Global Economies’, International Affairs, 77, 2, pp. 377-405.
  35. Thompson, E. P., 1966, The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Vintage Books.
  36. Valodia, I., 1989, ‘Flexibility in the Retail Industry’, Unpublished report, Durban,Trade Union Research Project.

In this issue

Vol. 31 No. 1 (2006): Africa Development →