Paper short abstract:

The arrival of the oil in Equatorial Guinea has been accompanied by new forms of consumption and commodification. This paper approaches some youngster’s practices for which the body is the protagonist of economic exchanges and it is also an object of investment.

Paper long abstract:

From the early 1990's Equatorial Guinea has experimented fast and intense social and economical transformations that have caused a massive urbanization process, followed of new ways of social interaction. The arrival of the first oil-boom incomes has sourced new consumption and wealth representation practices. Some of these practices are completely new, while others provide certain continuity to ancient dynamics established during the colonial period. This paper analyzes some ethnographic material on sexual practices among the youth in Malabo, the capital of the country. In these practices, bodies are turned into commodities and objects of investment. The terms and dynamics of the sexual exchange, as well as the cultural production around the issue, constitute a great arena where the tensions, anxieties and the violence of urban Guinean society become explicit.