Political Economy of Everyday Life in Africa

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). Adigun Agbaje is Professor of Political Science at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and Visiting Professor and Director-General, Oba (Dr) Sikiru Kayode Adetona I statute for Governance Studies, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria. He is the author of The Nigerian Press, Hegemony, and the Social Construction of Legitimacy, 1960-1983. David Pratten is Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of Africa and Director of the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Since 2010 David has been Co-Editor of AFRICA: Journal of the International African Institut. His publications include Nigeria: The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria (2007), which won the Amaury Talbot Prize awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute. Gbemisola Animasawun is an Associate Professor (Reader) at the Center for Peace & Strategic Studies, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. His essays have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, edited books, policy briefs, working papers and op-eds that have earned him national and international research grants and honour. 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).

• Foreword - James FergusonApproaching the Political Economy of Everyday Life: An Introduction - Wale AdebanwiPART I - MONEY MATTERS: CURRENCY AND FISCAL LIFE STRUGGLESCattle, Currencies and the Politics of Commensuration on a Colonial Frontier - John and Jean ComaroffCurrency and Conflict in Colonial Nigeria - David PrattenCoercion or Trade? Multiple Self-realization during the Rubber Boom in German Kamerun (1899-1913) - Peter L GeschiereCoercion or Trade? Multiple Self-realization during the Rubber Boom in German Kamerun (1899-1913) - Tristan OestermannThe Macroeconomics of Marginal Gains: Africa's Lessons to Social Theorists - Celestin MongaPART II - LABOUR, SOCIAL LIVES AND PRECARITYFrom Enslavement to Precarity? The Labour Question in African History - Frederick CooperNavigating Formality in a Migrant Labour Force - Maxim BoltPART III - MARGINALITY, DISAFFECTION AND BIO-ECONOMIC DISTRESSPrecarious Life: Violence and Poverty Under Boko Haram and MEND - Michael J. WattsThe Debt Imperium: Relations of Owing after Apartheid - Anne-Maria MakhuluMarginal Men and Social Conflicts in Nigeria: Okada Riders in Lagos - Gbemisola AnimasawunSopona, Social Relations and the Political Economy of Colonial Smallpox Control in Ekiti, Nigeria - Elisha P. RennePART IV - HISTORY, TEMPORALITY, AGENCY AND DEMOCRATIC LIFEHistory as Value Added? Valuing the Past in Africa - Sara S. BerryCultural Mediation, Colonialism and Politics: Colonial "Truchement", Postcolonial Translator - Souleymane Bachir Diagne"Kos'ona Miran?" Patronage, Prebendalism and Democratic Life in Contemporary Nigeria - Adigun AgbajeAFTERWORD: The Landscapes Beyond the Margins: Agency, Optimization and the Power of the Empirical - Jane Guyer

An essential volume. For scholars of Africa, several of the contributors and perspectives may well be familiar (more than half of the book's contributors are professors, who have published widely), but the gathering of critical perspectives offers a rare opportunity to take stock of what James Ferguson calls a 'shared intellectual sensibility' (Foreword, p. xvii). For those who are not so familiar with African research, or who may want to move beyond policy approaches, this book is a formidable place to start.