6th Biennial Richard Robinson Business History Workshop presents
Contradictions of Freedom: African Labour Relations in Historical Perspective with Stefano Bellucci
THU APRIL 30TH | 6:30pm
Preceded by Reception at 6pm
Smith Memorial Student Union
1825 SW Broadway
SMSU RM 294
RSVP https://forms.gle/AnnGkPSFy8yJ9sSK6
Centuries of African labor relations reflect the broader history of African societies, yet this history is too often framed as a straightforward progression from unfreedom to freedom. In practice, what appears as a shift from slavery to free wage labor often involved structural displacements in which coercion was relabeled rather than eliminated, and multiple forms of labor relations coexisted simultaneously. Drawing on the comparative taxonomy developed by the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations (IISH, Amsterdam), this presentation examines African labor history as social change — while recognizing that change does not always mean progress. The binary of freedom versus unfreedom, though central, is insufficient on its own. Incorporating commodification, reciprocal labor, and tributary labor reveals that many arrangements contain internal contradictions even when they appear progressive. A productive lens for reading this history is to ask what makes certain labor and social arrangements seem inevitable, and what renders others transient.
Stefano Bellucci is lecturer at the University of Leiden and senior researcher at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam Netherlands, where he served as head of the Africa Desk until 2015. His scholarship centers on the intersections of capitalism and labor in Africa, the history of African trade unionism, and the social and labor dimensions of Italian colonialism in Africa. Outside of academia, he has worked at UNESCO and the OECD. His publications include works in both English and Italian, including Africa contemporanea: Politica, cultura, istituzioni a sud del Sahara (Contemporary Africa: Politics, Culture, Institutions South of the Sahara) and Storia delle guerre africane: Dalla fine del colonialismo al neoliberalismo globale (History of African Wars: From the End of Colonialism to Global Neoliberalism), as well as a book co-authored with Holger Weiss, The Internationalisation of the Labour Question. He also leads the ILO-funded General Labour History of Africa project, a three-volume series, in addition to editing two book series with De Gruyter Brill and Palgrave. Bellucci is currently writing a history of international trade unionism in Africa.
WORKSHOP DETAILS
For a list of all panel discussions and papers presented, see our Full Program.
All talks shown in the program are FREE and Open to the Public. Those interested in attending the panels are welcome to read the papers beforehand.For access to the papers, please email psu.business.history.workshop@gmail.com