Wale Adebanwi 
The Political Economy of Everyday Life in Africa [EPUB ebook] 
Beyond the Margins

Multi-disciplinary examination of the role of ordinary African people as agents in the generation and distribution of well-being in modern Africa.






What are the fundamental issues, processes, agency and dynamics that shape the political economy of life in modern Africa? In this book, the contributors – experts in anthropology, history, political science, economics, conflict and peace studies, philosophy and language – examine the opportunities and constraints placed on living, livelihoods and sustainable life on the continent. Reflecting on why and how the political economy of life approach is essential for understanding the social process in modern Africa, they engage with the intellectual oeuvre of the influential Africanist economic anthropologist Jane Guyer, who provides an Afterword. The contributors analyse the politicaleconomy of everyday life as it relates to money and currency; migrant labour forces and informal and formal economies; dispossession of land; debt and indebtedness; socio-economic marginality; and the entrenchment of colonial andapartheid pasts.


Wale Adebanwi is the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at the University of Oxford. He is author of
Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning (University of Rochester Press).

Tabella dei contenuti

Foreword – James Ferguson

Approaching the Political Economy of Everyday Life: An Introduction – Wale Adebanwi

PART I – MONEY MATTERS: CURRENCY AND FISCAL LIFE STRUGGLES

Cattle, Currencies and the Politics of Commensuration on a Colonial Frontier – John and Jean Comaroff

Currency and Conflict in Colonial Nigeria – David Pratten

Coercion or Trade? Multiple Self-realization during the Rubber Boom in German Kamerun (1899-1913) – Peter L Geschiere

Coercion or Trade? Multiple Self-realization during the Rubber Boom in German Kamerun (1899-1913) – Tristan Oestermann

The Macroeconomics of Marginal Gains: Africa’s Lessons to Social Theorists – Celestin Monga

PART II – LABOUR, SOCIAL LIVES AND PRECARITY

From Enslavement to Precarity? The Labour Question in African History – Frederick Cooper

Navigating Formality in a Migrant Labour Force – Maxim Bolt

PART III – MARGINALITY, DISAFFECTION AND BIO-ECONOMIC DISTRESS

Precarious Life: Violence and Poverty Under Boko Haram and MEND – Michael J. Watts

The Debt Imperium: Relations of Owing after Apartheid – Anne-Maria Makhulu

Marginal Men and Social Conflicts in Nigeria: Okada Riders in Lagos – Gbemisola Animasawun

Sopona, Social Relations and the Political Economy of Colonial Smallpox Control in Ekiti, Nigeria – Elisha P. Renne

PART IV – HISTORY, TEMPORALITY, AGENCY AND DEMOCRATIC LIFE

History as Value Added? Valuing the Past in Africa – Sara S. Berry

Cultural Mediation, Colonialism and Politics: Colonial ‘Truchement’, Postcolonial Translator – Souleymane Bachir Diagne

‘Kos’ona Miran?’ Patronage, Prebendalism and Democratic Life in Contemporary Nigeria – Adigun Agbaje

AFTERWORD: The Landscapes Beyond the Margins: Agency, Optimization and the Power of the Empirical – Jane Guyer

Circa l’autore

Wale Adebanwi is Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning (2016) and editor of The Political Economy of Everyday Life in Africa (2017).