Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on visionary practices of people engaging in the production of goods or provision of services.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on visionary practices of people engaging in the production of goods or provision of services. Its starting point is the application by newspaper editor I.B. Thomas to the Colonial Development and Welfare Board in 1948 for a loan to establish a pig farm. Since Thomas had, unlike others, previously been denied a loan for purchasing a printing press, this second application might be read as Thomas having changed strategy to realize the material future he envisioned with the help of a detour. Thomas’ application thus more broadly points to strategies of dealing with the seemingly unknowable (for which entrepreneurial practices money could be raised) as well as practices of imagining times to come from precarious economic positions, against the background of experiencing a volatile, hostile and exploitative economic system and with the aim to secure survival.

Starting from Thomas, this paper will also turn to the visionary practices of artisans and craftspeople such as goldsmiths, bakers and furniture makers. The aim of the paper is to point to the various ways in which people navigated the colonial economy, their prospections of how they could secure their survival and realize their aspirations. Which past, present and innovative material sources and knowledge could they draw on when engaging in such visionary practices? How did the changing economic environment inform people’s aspirations, what were their strategies to realize their aspirations, and how could they make seemingly available, tested and visionary pathways serve their goals?