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).

Contributions by: Adigun Agbaje, Anne-Maria Makhulu, Celestin Monga, David Pratten, Elisha Elisha Renne, Frederick Cooper, Gbemisola Animasawun, James Ferguson, Jane Guyer, John and Jean Comaroff, Maxim Bolt, Michael J. Watts, Peter L Geschiere, Sara S. Berry, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Tristan Oestermann, Wale Adebanwi