Violence in a Time of Liberation

How can we account for the apparent increase in ethnic violence across the globe? Donald L. Donham develops a methodology for understanding violence that shows why this question needs to be recast. He examines an incident that occurred at a South African gold mine at the moment of the 1994 elections that brought apartheid to a close. Black workers ganged up on the Zulus among them, killing two and injuring many more. While nearly everyone came to characterize the conflict as "ethnic," Donham argues that heightened ethnic identity was more an outcome of the violence than its cause. Based on his careful reconstruction of events, he contends that the violence was not motivated by hatred of an ethnic other. It emerged, rather, in ironic ways, as capitalist managers gave up apartheid tactics and as black union activists took up strategies that departed from their stated values. National liberation, as it actually occurred, was gritty, contradictory, and incomplete. Given unusual access to the mine, Donham comes to this conclusion based on participant observation, review of extensive records, and interviews conducted over the course of a decade. Violence in a Time of Liberation is a kind of murder mystery that reveals not only who did it but also the ways that narratives of violence, taken up by various media, create ethnic violence after the fact.

“"Working with an award-winning photographer Santu Mofokeng, Donham was able to capture in both word and image the grittiness and hardships of compound life. In truth, the use of image and text is powerful. . . . This book represents a kind of "reckoning" with a world in transition, with violence, with capitalism that surely extends far beyond South African studies to entice readers concerned with such questions almost anywhere." - Anne Maria Makhulu, American Ethnologist”

"Taking off from a single episode, Donald L. Donham provides readers with a rich account that makes an important point: ethnic identification is often more the consequence of violence than the cause. Since people involved may, in retrospect, interpret an event using ethnic categories, understanding the complexity of the processes leading up to violence requires peeling back layers of backward projection and a reconstruction of the flow of events, tasks Donham performs here with sensitivity and insight." Frederick Cooper, author of Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History # "Violence in a Time of Liberation is an absorbing and exceptionally clear-sighted analysis of violence and ethnic consciousness in South Africa. Focused on a specific set of events that occurred at a gold mine in the mid-1990s, Donald L. Donham brings vivid ethnographic description and analysis to bear on some of the thorniest questions faced by social analysts of violence. His book is lucidly written and cunningly constructed, with a substantial narrative pull. It is a very significant contribution both to scholarly understandings of contemporary South African society and to theoretical debates around ethnic violence." James Ferguson, author of Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order "Violence in a Time of Liberation by Donald Donham, a University of California anthropologist, published last year, offers a prescient narrative of mine violence. Based on a study of a mine called Cinderella, it provides a piercing and lucid exposition of the path to this violence in a post-1994 moment... Violence in a Time of Liberation offers an exemplary example of how historical ethnography can be used to study violence. It probes us to give time and labour to understand better what has happened, even if its meanings remain elusive. For violence, too, is a way of remembering our disappointed hope." South Africa's Mail & Guardian, September 28th 2012 "Puzzled by the 1990s ethnicity card being played in South Africa along with the rejection of former apartheid policies based on blatant racist assumptions on cultural differences and ethnic boundaries, Donham dove into a sea of narratives about the event and came up stating that Cinderella's murders were 'symptomatic of processes created by national liberation in South Africa'... If two decades ago Donham's perspective might have sounded preposterous in some academic and political circles, the 2012 debates on the Marikana massacre have shown that more than atavist ethnical threatening values, disputes between unionists for miner allegiance could also be plausible causes for the killing of more than 30 workers during a strike. Extensive research and creative analysis like Donham's have helped to weave less dichotomous and more nuanced narratives on contemporary South Africa and its particular way of building democratic representation in a highly unequal capitalist scenario." - Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, May 2013

Donald L. Donham is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution; History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology; and Work and Power in Maale, Ethiopia.

Best remembered today for her acclaimed 1928 expressionist drama Machinal , based in part on the infamous murder trial of Ruth Snyder, Sophie Treadwell was an innovative American dramatist whose career spanned almost 60 years and nearly 40 plays. A relentless experimenter in dramatic subjects, styles, and forms, Treadwell was one of a select number of American women playwrights who also actively produced and directed their own works. She was also a professional journalist, and she constantly used her writings to explore women's personal and social struggles for independence and equality. This is the first book to chronicle her many achievements. The volume includes a career and biographical overview, detailed plot summaries and critical introductions to her plays, an annotated bibliography of works by and about her, and an exhaustive production history. Studies of American theatre have too long omitted the accomplishments of Sophie Treadwell. Although best remembered today for only a single work, the explosive 1928 drama Machinal , Treadwell maintained a career in the theatre that spanned close to 60 years and included the authorship of approximately 40 plays. At a time when women playwrights were growing steadily among the ranks of Broadway dramatists, Treadwell was one of a select few of these women who also actively produced and directed their own plays. She became a relentless and articulate advocate for the commercial and artistic rights afforded playwrights on Broadway and around the world. She experimented with a range of dramatic structures and styles, and often tackled timely or controversial subjects which she knew would prove unpopular with commercial producers. Most significantly, she continually placed female characters in subject positions in her plays and dramatized women's personal and social struggles for independence and equality. In spite of her achievements, Treadwell has been largely overlooked. But after highly prominent revivals of ^IMachinal^R by the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1990 and London's Royal National Theatre in 1993, she has begun to be recognized for her enormous contributions to the American stage. This volume is a comprehensive reference guide to her life and work. A biography and chronology summarize the most important events in her career. The book then presents summaries and critical overviews of her many plays. The work includes an extensive annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and it concludes with production histories for her works.

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