Introduction

Summary

This monograph deals with a number of problems in the field of urban and industrial anthropology in East Africa. It concerns the members of a largely migrant but nonetheless ‘committed’ labour force employed as railwaymen in Kampala, Uganda, and shows how workers in this industry form a distinct community, even a subculture, in the urban area. The form of this community is provided by the industrial process which generates a framework by reference to which certain relationships of solidarity and opposition are articulated. Of particular significance in this respect is the differentiation of the labour force in terms of occupation, ‘grade’, income and position in the industrial hierarchy, factors which give rise to inequalities of status and power and lead to alignments based on relative position in what are conceived of as systems of stratification and class. To this extent the study documents a particular example of the general trend toward status differentiation in urban Africa which has been noted in many recent publications. It will be seen, however, that such alignments are in this instance tempered by other factors. For although railwaymen are committed to industrial employment and have in many ways absorbed the values of industrial society they remain migrants. They do not form an urban proletariat which has severed all connection with its rural origins. This fact in itself raises a number of questions much debated among social scientists and others concerning the conditions necessary for urban and industrial growth in the so-called underdeveloped countries, but has a major consequence for the more limited purposes of the present study.