Balancing the Scales: Re-Centring Labour and Labourers in Namibian History

The conflation of labour activism and political activism in Namibian history and historiography - or views of a seamless transition between the two - has meant that meaningful empirical historical studies of labour relations and labour policy in Namibia have been downplayed, leaving scholars to rely on older, potentially outdated studies. The articles in this part-special issue de-centre Namibian nationalism from the economic and labour history of Namibia, instead re-centring the labour process, labour policy and the lived history of labourers themselves. Studying labour history necessitates working at multiple scales. Global labour history (GLH) frameworks, in conjunction with transnational and microhistory methodologies, enable deep consideration of structural transformations in globally interconnected economies as well as local contingent factors. GLH has helped to guide labour historians to balance both global and local scales. The articles in this special issue draw from new archival and oral history sources in order to reinvestigate central themes in Namibian labour history and to open new vistas for future research.