Introduction: The Dominance of Meta-narratives

Modernization & shattered expectations

A useful starting point for discussing the academic traditions of interpreting urbanization and migration in southern Africa is Ferguson's book, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, from which the above two quotes are taken. This is because it not only provided a detailed explanation of how and why some of these academic traditions emerged, but also because it provided comprehensive evidence of how adherence to a model of modernization created an often exaggerated picture of transition to permanent migration during and in the early aftermath of the colonial period. One of Ferguson's primary purposes in the book was to examine the validity of ‘the dominant accounts of urban residence and worker mobility … [that] share an underlying metanarrative in which “migrant labor” is gradually replaced by “permanent urbanization”’ (ibid.: 40).