Global Southwests: Capital, Labor, and Uranium in American and African Southwests
Professor Jayita Sarkar – University of Glasgow
Global Southwests traces the interconnected networks of transimperial capital and labor dispossession in Southwestern United States and Southwest Africa or Namibia through the materiality of uranium. Jesse C. Johnson served for decades as the head of the US Atomic Energy Commission’s raw materials division in Grand Junction, Colorado, developing global networks through the Combined Development Agency. Focusing on Johnson’s networks in Southern Africa, his consulting services for private companies, and the transnational capital that developed Rössing Uranium in South Africa- controlled Namibia, this article foregrounds the long reach of transimperial capitalist forces in spaces untouched by the promises of formal decolonization.