Rory Pilossof
Biographic Data
| ID | 114519 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rory Pilossof |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rory |
| FAMILY NAME | Pilossof |
| SIGNATURE | PILOSSOF R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Free State |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3952-0786 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Women and Work in Zimbabwe, c.1800–2000
This paper looks at the working lives of women in Zimbabwe and how these have shifted and changed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To do so, official labor records, census and labor surveys are augmented with qualitative data about the labor relations women performed outside of the formal economy. Key here will be exploring female contributions to the informal labor economy, subsistence or peasant agriculture, and their reproductive a…
This is where all the white farmers come to die
Throughout the pre-independence era, commercial tobacco growing remained an exclusively white enterprise in Zimbabwe. The situation did not substantially change with the advent of majority rule in 1980. Commercial agriculture in general, and tobacco growing in particular, continued to be dominated by a few large-scale white farmers. However, the situation was to change drastically following the adoption by the Robert Mugabe regime of the fast-tra…
Fending for Ourselves
Labour and Economic Change in Southern Africa c.1900–2000
This book explores the social and economic development of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi over the course of the twentieth century. These three countries have long shared and interconnected pasts. All three were drawn into the British Empire at a similar time and the formation of the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland formally linked these countries together for a decade in the mid-twentieth century. This formal political relationship cre…
Professionals and Executives
Over the course of the twentieth century there have been radical changes to the working lives and employment opportunities of millions of Africans. This is true of waged labour as well as entrepreneurs, self-employed artisans or what might be deemed professionals. The development and growth of professional occupations, such as lawyers, doctors and nurses, have had major impacts on the social and political history of the continent. At the same tim…
Professionals and Executives
Seventeen Professionals and Executives
Imagining Change, Imaginary Futures
This article invites historians to think more critically about the language, narratives, and tropes historians use to identify, describe, and explain processes of change. By doing so, we raise questions about the possibility of historicizing ideas and experiences of change. The suitability of historians’ descriptive and explanatory tools and frameworks for understanding one of the most important aims of historical scholarship is often very limite…
General Labour History of Africa
Farms, farmworkers and new forms of livelihoods in southern Africa
This review essay looks at three recent books on farms, farm labour, and rural livelihoods in southern Africa. The books— Farm labor struggles in Zimbabwe: The ground of politics , by Blair Rutherford; Ordered estates: Welfare, power and maternalism on Zimbabwe's (once white) Highveld , by Andrew M. C. Hartnack; and Zimbabwe's migrants and South Africa's border farms: The roots of impermanence , by Maxim Bolt—offer a range of insights into labour…
Big Business and White Insecurities at the End of Empire in Southern Africa, c. 1961–1977
This paper examines popular and widespread mistrust of large-scale capitalism, and its potential for disloyalty to the post-1965 Rhodesian state, by the white middle class and small-scale capitalists in Rhodesia. It focuses on the relationship between Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland, managing director of the multinational Lonrho company, and Wilfred Brooks, the editor of the largest business/trade journal in Rhodesia, Rhodesian Property & Finance. This cas…
Wage labor in historical perspective
This paper traces the rise and fall of wage labor in Zimbabwe between c.1960 and 2010. Building on Giovanni Arrighi’s seminal study, ‘Labour supplies in historical perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia’, we argue that the 1950s were the highpoint of African wage labor participation in the Southern Rhodesian/Zimbabwean economy. From that point, the percentage of wage labor as part of the economically a…
Not all whites are farmers
Whiteness has always been visible and marked in Africa. This is what makes whiteness in Africa distinct from whiteness in the West. This article explores the question of how the visibility of whiteness matters for its politics by focusing on the case of Zimbabwe. Much of the work on whiteness in this country, concentrating solely on the white farming community, presents the white population as a homogeneous group. This article uses the urban-rura…
Special Issue
Two decades ago, a cohort of key historians made an important intervention into understanding the workings of political violence and coercion in southern Africa. The essay col- \nlection was published on the cusp of the democratic transition in South Africa in 1992.2 They focused on coercion and paternalism in the labour market and cults of violence in Mozambique; violence on the gold mines in South Africa; political and masculinist domestic viol…
New Histories of Firearms and Soldiers in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Africa Violent Intermediaries
The role and impact of firearms and warfare in colonial and pre-colonial Africa are well-covered terrain in African historiography. Initially, the lens of technological determinism and imperial sup
Possibilities and Constraints of Market-Led Land Reforms in Southern Africa
This paper provides a systematic basis, hitherto missing in the current scholarship, to quantify land transfers in Zimbabwe after 1980. It uses title deed information to determine year of sale via a number of sources. The main finding of this research is that a great deal of land changed ownership during this period, which, if the government had been committed to land reform, it could have acted upon. Evidence suggests as much as 67 per cent of w…
Labor Relations in Zimbabwe from 1900 to 2000
This article looks at the shifts and continuities in labor relations in Zimbabwe from c. 1900–2000. It does so by looking at three cross sections (1904, 1951, and 2002) to examine the changes that have taken place. By exploring the continuities (subsistence agriculture) and shifts (limited industrialization and urbanization) of labor relations over this period, it is hoped that the article provides a comprehensive account of the rapid and radical…
Reinventing Significance
Review Article: Josephine Lucy Fisher (2010), Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles: The Decolonisation of White Identity in Zimbabwe , Canberra: Australian National University Press, ISBN 978-1-921-66614-8 (pbk.), xiii + 276 pp. David McDermott Hughes (2010), Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging , New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-62143-5 (pbk.), 204 pp. Kate Victoria Law (2012), Writing White Women: White…
Fantasy and Reality
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being. Farmers' Voices from Zimbabwe
The history of colonial land alienation, the grievances fuelling the liberation war, and post-independence land reforms have all been grist to the mill of recent scholarship on Zimbabwe. Yet for all that the country’s white farmers have received considerable attention from academics and journalists, the fact that they have always played a dynamic role in cataloguing and representing their own affairs has gone unremarked. It is this crucial dimens…
A Predictable Tragedy
A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe." African Historical Review, 44(1), pp. 143–144
The Future is Bright' versus 'The Future is Bleak
In 2011 Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba and Ian Scoones produced a series of eight short documentaries entitled Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Voices From the Field to accompany the book Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities.1 The findings and conclusions of this book have generated a great deal of controversy for their positive assessments of the fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) and this documentary series does nothing to dampen the…
Remaining Apolitical in a Political Crisis
This article explores the fortunes of the leading farming periodical in Zimbabwe, The Farmer magazine, and how its parent body, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) sought to control, censor and manipulate The Farmer and the coverage it gave the deepening crises in Zimbabwe. Doing so gives voice to a part of the white experience in Zimbabwe and also shows that the farming community was far from a cohesive entity. The article also shows that there a…
Dollarisation’ in Zimbabwe and the Death of an Industry
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
As the crisis in Zimbabwe deepened after 2000, the plight of white Zimbabweans became international news. In turn, this created the space and the market for whites to tell and sell their story; an opportunity that has not gone unheeded. This review essay focuses on several examples of the latest evolution of Zimbabwe's white writing. While in no way trying to excuse or belittle the atrocious events that have happened to white farmers and others, …
General Labour History of Africa
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
As the crisis in Zimbabwe deepened after 2000, the plight of white Zimbabweans became international news. In turn, this created the space and the market for whites to tell and sell their story; an opportunity that has not gone unheeded. This review essay focuses on several examples of the latest evolution of Zimbabwe's white writing. While in no way trying to excuse or belittle the atrocious events that have happened to white farmers and others, …
Wage labor in historical perspective
This paper traces the rise and fall of wage labor in Zimbabwe between c.1960 and 2010. Building on Giovanni Arrighi’s seminal study, ‘Labour supplies in historical perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia’, we argue that the 1950s were the highpoint of African wage labor participation in the Southern Rhodesian/Zimbabwean economy. From that point, the percentage of wage labor as part of the economically a…
Dollarisation’ in Zimbabwe and the Death of an Industry
Possibilities and Constraints of Market-Led Land Reforms in Southern Africa
This paper provides a systematic basis, hitherto missing in the current scholarship, to quantify land transfers in Zimbabwe after 1980. It uses title deed information to determine year of sale via a number of sources. The main finding of this research is that a great deal of land changed ownership during this period, which, if the government had been committed to land reform, it could have acted upon. Evidence suggests as much as 67 per cent of w…
Reinventing Significance
Review Article: Josephine Lucy Fisher (2010), Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles: The Decolonisation of White Identity in Zimbabwe , Canberra: Australian National University Press, ISBN 978-1-921-66614-8 (pbk.), xiii + 276 pp. David McDermott Hughes (2010), Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging , New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-62143-5 (pbk.), 204 pp. Kate Victoria Law (2012), Writing White Women: White…
Big Business and White Insecurities at the End of Empire in Southern Africa, c. 1961–1977
This paper examines popular and widespread mistrust of large-scale capitalism, and its potential for disloyalty to the post-1965 Rhodesian state, by the white middle class and small-scale capitalists in Rhodesia. It focuses on the relationship between Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland, managing director of the multinational Lonrho company, and Wilfred Brooks, the editor of the largest business/trade journal in Rhodesia, Rhodesian Property & Finance. This cas…
Labor Relations in Zimbabwe from 1900 to 2000
This article looks at the shifts and continuities in labor relations in Zimbabwe from c. 1900–2000. It does so by looking at three cross sections (1904, 1951, and 2002) to examine the changes that have taken place. By exploring the continuities (subsistence agriculture) and shifts (limited industrialization and urbanization) of labor relations over this period, it is hoped that the article provides a comprehensive account of the rapid and radical…
Fantasy and Reality
Dollarisation’ in Zimbabwe and the Death of an Industry
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
As the crisis in Zimbabwe deepened after 2000, the plight of white Zimbabweans became international news. In turn, this created the space and the market for whites to tell and sell their story; an opportunity that has not gone unheeded. This review essay focuses on several examples of the latest evolution of Zimbabwe's white writing. While in no way trying to excuse or belittle the atrocious events that have happened to white farmers and others, …
Remaining Apolitical in a Political Crisis
This article explores the fortunes of the leading farming periodical in Zimbabwe, The Farmer magazine, and how its parent body, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) sought to control, censor and manipulate The Farmer and the coverage it gave the deepening crises in Zimbabwe. Doing so gives voice to a part of the white experience in Zimbabwe and also shows that the farming community was far from a cohesive entity. The article also shows that there a…
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being. Farmers' Voices from Zimbabwe
The history of colonial land alienation, the grievances fuelling the liberation war, and post-independence land reforms have all been grist to the mill of recent scholarship on Zimbabwe. Yet for all that the country’s white farmers have received considerable attention from academics and journalists, the fact that they have always played a dynamic role in cataloguing and representing their own affairs has gone unremarked. It is this crucial dimens…
A Predictable Tragedy
A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe." African Historical Review, 44(1), pp. 143–144
The Future is Bright' versus 'The Future is Bleak
In 2011 Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba and Ian Scoones produced a series of eight short documentaries entitled Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Voices From the Field to accompany the book Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities.1 The findings and conclusions of this book have generated a great deal of controversy for their positive assessments of the fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) and this documentary series does nothing to dampen the…
Labor Relations in Zimbabwe from 1900 to 2000
This article looks at the shifts and continuities in labor relations in Zimbabwe from c. 1900–2000. It does so by looking at three cross sections (1904, 1951, and 2002) to examine the changes that have taken place. By exploring the continuities (subsistence agriculture) and shifts (limited industrialization and urbanization) of labor relations over this period, it is hoped that the article provides a comprehensive account of the rapid and radical…
Reinventing Significance
Review Article: Josephine Lucy Fisher (2010), Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles: The Decolonisation of White Identity in Zimbabwe , Canberra: Australian National University Press, ISBN 978-1-921-66614-8 (pbk.), xiii + 276 pp. David McDermott Hughes (2010), Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging , New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-62143-5 (pbk.), 204 pp. Kate Victoria Law (2012), Writing White Women: White…
Fantasy and Reality
Special Issue
Two decades ago, a cohort of key historians made an important intervention into understanding the workings of political violence and coercion in southern Africa. The essay col- \nlection was published on the cusp of the democratic transition in South Africa in 1992.2 They focused on coercion and paternalism in the labour market and cults of violence in Mozambique; violence on the gold mines in South Africa; political and masculinist domestic viol…
New Histories of Firearms and Soldiers in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Africa Violent Intermediaries
The role and impact of firearms and warfare in colonial and pre-colonial Africa are well-covered terrain in African historiography. Initially, the lens of technological determinism and imperial sup
Possibilities and Constraints of Market-Led Land Reforms in Southern Africa
This paper provides a systematic basis, hitherto missing in the current scholarship, to quantify land transfers in Zimbabwe after 1980. It uses title deed information to determine year of sale via a number of sources. The main finding of this research is that a great deal of land changed ownership during this period, which, if the government had been committed to land reform, it could have acted upon. Evidence suggests as much as 67 per cent of w…
Big Business and White Insecurities at the End of Empire in Southern Africa, c. 1961–1977
This paper examines popular and widespread mistrust of large-scale capitalism, and its potential for disloyalty to the post-1965 Rhodesian state, by the white middle class and small-scale capitalists in Rhodesia. It focuses on the relationship between Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland, managing director of the multinational Lonrho company, and Wilfred Brooks, the editor of the largest business/trade journal in Rhodesia, Rhodesian Property & Finance. This cas…
Wage labor in historical perspective
This paper traces the rise and fall of wage labor in Zimbabwe between c.1960 and 2010. Building on Giovanni Arrighi’s seminal study, ‘Labour supplies in historical perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia’, we argue that the 1950s were the highpoint of African wage labor participation in the Southern Rhodesian/Zimbabwean economy. From that point, the percentage of wage labor as part of the economically a…
Not all whites are farmers
Whiteness has always been visible and marked in Africa. This is what makes whiteness in Africa distinct from whiteness in the West. This article explores the question of how the visibility of whiteness matters for its politics by focusing on the case of Zimbabwe. Much of the work on whiteness in this country, concentrating solely on the white farming community, presents the white population as a homogeneous group. This article uses the urban-rura…
Farms, farmworkers and new forms of livelihoods in southern Africa
This review essay looks at three recent books on farms, farm labour, and rural livelihoods in southern Africa. The books— Farm labor struggles in Zimbabwe: The ground of politics , by Blair Rutherford; Ordered estates: Welfare, power and maternalism on Zimbabwe's (once white) Highveld , by Andrew M. C. Hartnack; and Zimbabwe's migrants and South Africa's border farms: The roots of impermanence , by Maxim Bolt—offer a range of insights into labour…
Professionals and Executives
Over the course of the twentieth century there have been radical changes to the working lives and employment opportunities of millions of Africans. This is true of waged labour as well as entrepreneurs, self-employed artisans or what might be deemed professionals. The development and growth of professional occupations, such as lawyers, doctors and nurses, have had major impacts on the social and political history of the continent. At the same tim…
Professionals and Executives
Seventeen Professionals and Executives
Imagining Change, Imaginary Futures
This article invites historians to think more critically about the language, narratives, and tropes historians use to identify, describe, and explain processes of change. By doing so, we raise questions about the possibility of historicizing ideas and experiences of change. The suitability of historians’ descriptive and explanatory tools and frameworks for understanding one of the most important aims of historical scholarship is often very limite…
General Labour History of Africa
Fending for Ourselves
Labour and Economic Change in Southern Africa c.1900–2000
This book explores the social and economic development of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi over the course of the twentieth century. These three countries have long shared and interconnected pasts. All three were drawn into the British Empire at a similar time and the formation of the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland formally linked these countries together for a decade in the mid-twentieth century. This formal political relationship cre…
Women and Work in Zimbabwe, c.1800–2000
This paper looks at the working lives of women in Zimbabwe and how these have shifted and changed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To do so, official labor records, census and labor surveys are augmented with qualitative data about the labor relations women performed outside of the formal economy. Key here will be exploring female contributions to the informal labor economy, subsistence or peasant agriculture, and their reproductive a…
This is where all the white farmers come to die
Throughout the pre-independence era, commercial tobacco growing remained an exclusively white enterprise in Zimbabwe. The situation did not substantially change with the advent of majority rule in 1980. Commercial agriculture in general, and tobacco growing in particular, continued to be dominated by a few large-scale white farmers. However, the situation was to change drastically following the adoption by the Robert Mugabe regime of the fast-tra…
African studies and sociopolitical issues (19 works) · African history and culture studies (18 works) · Political science (18 works) · Economics (12 works) · Geography (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · History (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (8 works)