Mining Gold and Manufacturing Ignorance: Occupational Lung Disease and the Buying and Selling of Labour in Southern Africa

Jock McCulloch · Pavla Miller

Mac 2023 · Springer Nature

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This open access book charts how South Africa’s gold mines have systematically suppressed evidence of hazardous work practices and the risks associated with mining.

For most of the twentieth century, South Africa was the world’s largest producer of gold. Although the country enjoyed a reputation for leading the world in occupational health legislation, the mining companies developed a system of medical surveillance and workers’ compensation which compromised the health of black gold miners, facilitated the spread of tuberculosis, and ravaged the communities and economies of labour-sending states. The culmination of two decades of meticulous archival research, this book exposes the making, contesting, and unravelling of the companies’ capacity to shape – and corrupt – medical knowledge.

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Jock McCulloch (1945 - 2018) was one of the foremost historians of occupational health of his generation. He also wrote on colonization, race relations, and psychiatry. Jock was Emeritus Professor of History at RMIT University (Australia), and fellow of both the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences and the Academy of the Humanities.
Pavla Miller is Emeritus Professor of Historical Sociology at RMIT University (Australia). She wrote Long Division: State Schooling in South Australian Society; Transformations of Patriarchy in the West; and Patriarchy. An interdisciplinary scholar, she also published on explanations of low fertility, masters and servants’ legislation, children’s work, and the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme.