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If Only: design, technology and society 
INTERACTION DESIGN THEORY SEMINAR 4th semester

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This lecture considers the history of the inclusion of West African labourers in the global economy: what specific mechanisms and terms defined this process? What was the promise of the creation of a system of free wage labour? And how convincing was its implementation in this part of the world? It will cover the current and past struggles of these male and female by exploring how they have managed to secure sources of power and security in the overwhelming absence of state- or employer-related social welfare mechanisms.

Readings:
  • Kate Meagher, Laura Manna and Maxim Bolt, Making the Right Connections: Globalization, Economic Inclusion and African workers, Journal of Development Studies, 2016.
  • Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, “Labour Recruitment in the Nineteenth Century: The Place of Practicality” (Ch. 2), Mediators, Contract Men, and Colonial Capital: Mechanized Gold Mining in the Gold Coast Colony, 1879-1909, University of Rochester Press, 2018).

Short Bio: 

Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen is currently a lecturer and researcher at the history department of the University of Basel. She completed her doctoral research in African History at Oxford University in 2014. Her research focus lies in the social and economic history of West Africa. Her current research project traces the history of agricultural development policies and practices in Liberia between 1944 and 1957. Her first book Mediators, Contract Men and Colonial Capital: Mechanized Gold Mining in the Gold Coast Colony, 1879-1909, which is part of the African Studies Series of the University of Rochester Press, traced the economic factors behind indirect recruitment for Ghana’s early colonial gold mines. It paid special attention to a variety of West African labor agents orchestrating this form of migration; both male and female, career-and profit-oriented. General research interests include Africa during the age of developmentalism, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rural history, the history of African intermediaries, the history of work.

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Session 11 – 13.05 - Commodities Trade

Guest Lecture: Prof Dr Harald Fischer-Tiné, Institut für Geschichte, ETH
Details & Readings tba

Session 12 – 20.05 - The Silk Road

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