The Political Economy of Everyday Life in Africa: Beyond the Margins

383 Pages·2017·12.46 MB·English

by  Adebanwi

This book offers a valuable focus on the role of ordinary African people as
agents and architects of meaning in their interface with the global economy,
rather than adopting the conventional perspective on Africans as victims,
lumpen elements or criminals. This allows a consideration of the positive
potential of African engagement with the global economy, and reflects on the
creative tensions that emerge from the struggles of creating livelihoods on the
margins.
Kate Meagher, Lecturer in Development Studies,
London School of Economics, UK
This wide-ranging and stimulating collection is a wonderful tribute to the
work of Jane Guyer – one of the most original and provocative thinkers in
African studies and economic anthropology of the last half century. Building
on the theme of the ‘political economy of everyday life’ the contributors
engage us with questions of livelihood and life, economic values and trans-
actions, and processes of social composition and recomposition. In doing so,
they highlight some of the important ways in which ‘everyday life’ on the
continent has challenged the wider scholarly community to rethink ortho-
doxies and think more creatively across disciplinary divides.
Megan Vaughan, Professor of African History and Health,
University College, London, UK
It is no easy task to decide quite how to pay tribute to the wide-ranging
fertility and suggestibility of Jane Guyer’s writings as an anthropologist about
African political economy. Adebanwi and the contributors have responded
to the challenge in the most appropriate of ways, by offering a set of essays,
addressing her most fundamental concerns, that look themselves set to be
future classics. The contributors demonstrate how people at the margins keep
on keeping on, not just through fortitude, though there is plenty of that, but
by trusting their imagination and creativity to forge the connections in life
that at least get them by and at best bring them success.
Richard Fardon, Professor of West African Anthropology,
School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK

The Political Economy of
Everyday Life in Africa
Beyond the Margins
Edited by
Wale Adebanwi
Foreword by James Ferguson
James Currey
an imprint of
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
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www.jamescurrey.com
and of
Boydell & Brewer Inc.
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First published in 2017
© Contributors 2017
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
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accurate or appropriate.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
available on request
ISBN 978-1-84701-165-7 James Currey (Cloth)
ISBN 978-1-84701-166-4 (James Currey Africa only paperback)
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Typeset in 10 on 12pt Photina MT
by Avocet Typeset, Somerton, Somerset TA11 6RT
Contents
Maps, Illustrations & Tables ix
Notes on Contributors x
Foreword by James Ferguson xvii
Acknowledgements xix
Approaching the Political Economy of Everyday Life
An Introduction
Wale Adebanwi 1
Part I M ONEY MATTERS:
CURRENCY & FISCAL LIFE STRUGGLES 33
1 Cattle, Currencies & the Politics of Commensuration
on a Colonial Frontier
Jean & John L. Comaroff 35
2 Currency & Conflict in Colonial Nigeria
David Pratten 72
3 Coercion or Trade? Multiple Self-realization
during the Rubber Boom in German Kamerun
(1899–1913)
Peter Geschiere & Tristan Oestermann 92
4 The Macroeconomics of Marginal Gains
Africa’s Lessons to Social Theorists
Célestin Monga 115
Part II LABOUR, SOCIAL LIVES
& PRECARITY 133
5 From Enslavement to Precarity? The Labour Question in
African History
Frederick Cooper 135
6 Navigating Formality in a Migrant Labour Force
Maxim Bolt 157
viii Contents
Part III M ARGINALITY, DISAFFECTION
& BIO-ECONOMIC DISTRESS 177
7 Precarious Life
Violence & Poverty under Boko Haram & MEND
Michael J. Watts 179
8 The Debt Imperium
Relations of Owing after Apartheid
Anne-Maria Makhulu 216
9 Marginal Men & Urban Social Conflicts
Okada Riders in Lagos
Gbemisola Animasawun 239
10 Sopona, Social Relations & the Political Economy
of Colonial Smallpox Control in Ekiti, Nigeria
Elisha P. Renne 266
Part IV HISTORICITY, TEMPORALITY, AGENCY
& DEMOCRATIC LIFE 285
11 History as Value Added? Valuing the Past in Africa
Sara Berry 287
12 Cultural Mediation, Colonialism & Politics
Colonial ‘Truchement’, Postcolonial Translator
Souleymane Bachir Diagne 308
13 ‘Kos’ona Miran?’ Patronage, Prebendalism
& Democratic Life in Contemporary Nigeria
Adigun Agbaje 318
AFTERWORD
The Landscapes Beyond the Margins
Agency, Optimization & the Power of the Empirical
Jane I. Guyer 335
Index 353
For Jane I. Guyer

Maps, Illustrations & Tables
Maps
1.1 Map of South Africa in the early nineteenth century 37
10.1 Map of Ekiti, 1952 272
Illustrations
1.1 Examples of Griqua Town coins 57
1.2 Cattle being herded in Mochudi 64
2.1 Line drawing of Manilla currency 87
6.1 The Grootplaas packshed and office 159
6.2 New arrivals at Grootplaas struggle to get their identity cards
and papers into the hands of a senior worker 168
7.1 Mothers of some of the 276 girls adopted by Boko Haram
participating in the #BringBackOurGirls campaign 183
7.2 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)
militants on a canoe 185
7.3 Conflict events and reported fatalities, Nigeria, 1997 –
March 2013 186
8.1 Women participating in South Africa’s SaveAct initiative 217
8.2 Participants in SaveAct’s programme, which ‘facilitates the
formation of savings and credit groups in rural communities as
a simple but effective tool to fight poverty’ 217
8.3 Men seeking loans wait for a money lender 223
9.1 A crowd of okada riders in Lagos 241
9.2 ‘Mass transit’: okada rider with seven passengers 245
9.3 Joint Action Front (JAF) in the forefront of the protests in support
of the okada riders 257
9.4 Several okada riders accompanying Governor Fashola during his
re-election campaign in 2007 259
10.1 Chief G.O. Kupolati (in white), with companions, in his traditional
medicine shop, Iye-Ekiti 275
10.2 ‘SMALLPOX made me BLIND’, poster by Ernest Hough 278
Tables
2.1 Manilla exchange rate and palm oil price, 1900–1948 78
2.2 Index of manilla exchange rates and palm oil prices, 1931–1947 81
2.3 Motives of the ‘man-leopard murders’, 1947 85
4.1 The search for a theoretical strategy 125