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- Convenors:
-
Peter Lockwood
(University of Goettingen)
Nikolaus Schareika (Georg August University)
Katja Werthmann (Leipzig University)
Neil Carrier (University of Bristol)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Disciplinary streams:
- Anthropology
Short Abstract
Drawing on detailed ethnographic research, this panel uses the careers of commodity traders as a prism to examine the self-organised economies of urban Africa and the 'petty capitalist enterprises' that sustain them. The panel is sponsored by the International African Institute.
Long Abstract
‘Petty capitalism, often as a supplement to wage-employment, offers itself as a means of salvation’, wrote the late Keith Hart (1973) in his classic essay on the informal economy in Ghana’s capital of Accra. Entering commodity trading offered a way for urban workers to escape the trap of ‘high living costs and low wages that is their lot’. Following recent discussion surrounding the limits of the ‘informality’ concept, this panel returns to Hart’s emphasis on commodity trading as an empirical prism for the comparative understanding of African urban economies.
This panel invites submissions that draw on economic anthropology to examine the careers of commodity traders in African cities. Potential commodities could include (but are not limited to): livestock, electronics, agricultural produce, clothes, energy resources (e.g., charcoal, gas). Contributions may reflect on the cultural institutions, personal biographies, regional histories and ecological and economic possibilities that enable or constrain the establishment of petty capitalist enterprises across urban Africa. Papers may discuss the social networks that constitute specific trades, the creation of economic ‘niches’ dominated by particular groups and in certain spaces of commerce (e.g., market areas, roadsides, squatted land). Contributions may raise questions of how commodity traders operate, produce, accumulate, exchange, access capital (e.g., via credit) and the extent to which commodity trading constitutes a form of ‘petty capitalism’, offering an escape from an uncertain life of labour.
Through detailed ethnography, the panel aims to go beyond broad theorisations of ‘informality’ to understand the economic activities that constitute life in African cities.