Table of Contents

Preliminary Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Colonial and Postcolonial Place Names
Introduction
Part 1. The Social Construction of the African Middle Class
1. Running Against the Wind: African Social Mobility and Identity in a Settler Colonial Society
2. Courting "Miss Education": The Love Affair with Social Mobility
3. The Quest for Bourgeois Domesticity: On Homemakers and Households
4. The Best of All Homes: Housing and Security of Tenure
Part 2. The Political Construction of the African Middle Class
5. A New Beginning: The Roots of African Politics, 1914-1933
6. Found and Lost: Toward an African Political Consensus, 1934-1948
7. Back Toward the Beginning: The Pursuit of Racial Partnership, 1949-1958
8. An Aborted Coronation: In Search of the Political Kingdom, 1955-1965
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

Focuses on an unintended consequence of colonialism —African upward mobility in the 20th century.

About the Author

Michael O. West teaches in the Departments of Sociology and Africana Studies at Binghamton University. He is co-editor (with William G. Martin) of Out of One, Many Africas: Reconstructing the Study and Meaning of Africa. He has written widely on Zimbabwean and southern African history, and on the African diaspora.

Reviews

"Offers an extremely sophisticated, nuanced view of the social and political construction of an African middle class in colonial Zimbabwe." -Elizabeth Schmidt "... the most important book to date on the origins and activities of the African elite in Southern Rhodesia... " -John Higginson