Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnographic study conducted with Lagosian scrap dealers from 2015 to 2019, this paper hypotheses that the growing role of local governments in the regulation of popular economies has opened the way for a “return of the guilds” as a core means of labor organization in Nigerian cities.

Paper long abstract:

In precolonial Nigeria, guilds (egbe) played an important role in the Yoruba city-states of the Southwest. Crafts were recognized by city authorities, their leaders held official titles and were responsible for regulating their trade in the city (Williams 1980). In Hausa city-states, guilds equally played a pivotal role in urban politics (Griffeth 2000).

In each case, the centrality of guilds in the regulation of labor and professional relations coincided with high urban autonomy and autocephaly – a historical “coincidence” that has been underlined in various contexts (Weber 1966, Bayly 1983). Inversely, guilds receded together with urban political autonomy, first because of the integration of city-states in larger territorial systems (Sokoto Caliphate and British colonization), and ultimately following the nationalization of industrial relations (Cooper 1996).

From the mid-1980s, however, macroeconomic transformations and SAPs led to the decline of the Nigerian state’s position in the regulation of labor and industrial relations. As urban governments regained extensive political autonomy at the turn of the 2000s (Salvaire 2021), they took on frontline positions in the regulation of popular economies, with environmental and security policies being increasingly mobilized to regulate economic activities and trades.

Based on an ethnographic study conducted with Lagosian scrap dealers from 2015 to 2019, this paper hypotheses that urban autonomization and the growing role of local governments in the regulation of popular economies has opened the way for a “return of the guilds” (Lucassen, De Moor, Van Zanden 2008) as core means of labor organization in contemporary Nigerian cities.