Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how Islamic notions of human and divine agency inflect attitudes and practices of work among Gambian workers and entrepreneurs. Furthermore, it analyses such predicaments in relation to entanglements of merchant capitalism and Islamic reform in the country.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores a long-standing issue in West African and, in particular, Islamic religious systems, namely the tension between divine predestination and human agency as applied to the making of livelihoods. Rather than relying on theological or discursive sources alone, however, the paper investigates how young Muslim Gambians invoke notions of destiny in everyday interactions to frame opportunities and to make sense of their trajectories. In particular, it will be concerned with the way 'fortune', an element of destiny, informs understandings of the spatiality and temporality of working life. It will be shown that, by debating where, when and how to find 'fortune', young workers and entrepreneurs construct work as a key mediator between divine will, their aspirations and their actions. This predicament of work and self is subsequently contextualized in relation to the emergent entanglements between Islamic 'reformism' and the shifting forms of the capitalist economy in West Africa.