国外非洲劳工史研究评述

A Historiographical Review of Research on African Labor History Abroad

非洲劳工史研究大致可分为缘起、兴起与发展、文化转向和复兴四个阶段。20世纪20—50年代,以罗德斯-利文斯顿研究所为代表的社会人类学家和少数加勒比地区的非洲裔学者开始系统研究非洲劳工问题。20世纪60—80年代是非洲劳工史研究的兴起和蓬勃发展时期,其核心范式是“无产阶级化”,强调非洲工人也能像欧洲工人一样拥有阶级意识,并最终产生社会革命。20世纪90年代至2008年,非洲劳工史研究重点从物质层面转向文化层面,尤其关注劳工文化、身份、性别以及意识形态等议题。2009年至今,非洲劳工史出现复兴,新的学术网络和著作快速涌现。学者们开始重视全球视野比较、历史数据挖掘和经济学方法的运用。中非经济交往的发展给“中国—非洲”研究学者们研究非洲劳工问题提供了便利条件,他们可能会对非洲劳工研究做出重要贡献。

The study of African labor history can be divided into four phases:(1)origins,(2)emergence and development,(3)the cultural turn,and(4)revival.From the 1920s to 1950s,social anthropologists,represented by the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute,and a few Caribbean scholars of African descent began to systematically study African labor issues.The period of the 1960s to 1980s witnessed the emergence and rapid development of research on African labor history with a central paradigm of“proletarianization,”which emphasized that African workers could have class consciousness like European workers and eventually produce social revolution.The study of African labor history entered a period of transition from the late 1980sas the African labor movement reached a low point.Therefore,in the period of the 1990sto 2008,scholars’research shifted from the material dimension to the cultural dimension,paying particular attention to issues of labor culture,identity,gender,and ideology.The period of 2009to the present constitutes the revival phase,where new scholarly networks and publications have emerged.Scholars now emphasize global comparisons,historical data mining,and quantitative methodology.This article also suggests that China-Africa engagement has facilitated the study of African labor issues among“China-Africa”scholars,who have started to make important contributions to African labor studies.