The article situates the contributions of the Review of African Political Economy to understanding Africa in relation to the defining texts of political economy and economic science and of political domination. It rejects culturalist, rationalist and causal explanations of African societies in favour of historical analyses. It argues for the importance of studies o...

The 'dop [tot] system' refers to the practice of giving wine to male farm workers at regular intervals during the working day, which was general throughout the Cape winelands by 1890. How do we explain its emergence and ubiquity? To understand the system, we must interpret it historically. This article traces the history of the dop system from the establishment of ...