UNSTABLE GROUND, the lives, deaths, and afterlives of gold in South Africa

637pp., paperback, Columbia University Press, New York, 2024

ISBN: 9780231216128

Rosalind C. Morris on the histories of South Africa’s gold mines. Interweaves ethnography, history, personal testimony, and political thought with readings of South African literary texts.

Based on field research conducted across more than twenty-five years around goldmines in South Africa mines, Unstable Ground reveals the worlds that gold made possible—and gold’s profound costs for those who have lived in its shadow and dreamt of its transformative power.

"This is a history of South Africa and the gold mining at its core unlike any you have encountered. Enriched by two and a half decades of field and archival research, this exquisitely crafted book calibrates many registers: poetical and lyrical, geological, legal, philosophical, technical, sociological, and much more. The result is sumptuously layered, each page shimmering with insight and a delight to read." Isabel Hofmeyr, author of Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House

'Brilliant! With writerly flair, Morris presents interviews from the margins and gives them a close reading based on more than twenty years of wide-ranging research, combined with dazzling theoretical analyses. Vivid and compelling, this counter-history is a work of exceptional power and literary richness." Antjie Krog, author of Pillage and Country of My Skull

Rosalind C. Morris is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. A writer, cultural critic, and documentary filmmaker, she has received numerous awards for her scholarly and artistic work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her books include That Which Is Not Drawn and Accounts and Drawings from Underground, East Rand Proprietary Mines Cashbook, 1906 (both with William Kentridge). She is the producer and director of the documentary film, We are Zama Zama, and the multimedia installation, The Zama Zama Project.