Book release in open access: Daniela Waldburger's « C’était bien à l’époque mais l’avenir iko sombre » - Negotiating Nostalgia with and among Ex-Mineworkers in Lubumbashi (DRC).

01.04.2025

It is now out there: in open access thanks to the funding of the FWF and as a result from the FWF project “Employment-tied housing in (post)colonial Africa” (PI: Prof. Kirsten Rüther)

Why do former mineworkers in Lubumbashi (DRC) remember exploitative working conditions and measures to control their private lives with nostalgia? Building on their 'objects of loss', this book answers this question, foregrounding the voice of so-called 'Départs Volontaires’. The study combines linguistics, anthropology, and archives research to explore what ex-mineworkers regard as material and emotional 'objects of loss'. The book advocates for a participatory research framework called ‘the baraza web’ which merges the researcher’s perspective with the standpoint of the ex-miners to create an alternative archive and to show that power relations within a research setting need constant questioning.

Just download your copy here and feel free to share the link: https://brill.com/display/title/71900