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- Convenors:
-
Timothy Raeymaekers
(University of Bologna)
Melusi Nkomo (Princeton University)
Muriel Côte (Lund University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Political Economy of Extractivism
- Location:
- S64 (RW I)
- Sessions:
- Monday 30 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
Considering rural forms of work as a driving force of contemporary African agrarian transformation, we specifically focus on the current interfaces between rural work and commodified labour, socio-ecological reproduction, and the relation between ‘freedom’ and ‘unfreedom’
Long Abstract:
This panel concentrates on rural forms of work as a driving force of contemporary African agrarian transformation. Aiming to move beyond the urban-rural and formal-informal dichotomies that continue to characterize most agrarian research, we favour a wider focus on work, as that relational and creative process that underpins the (re-)production of meaningful human activity, which may, or may not, be commodified as labour. This choice of focus is inspired by at least two recent understudied tendencies in the African context: a diversification of rural work into ‘own-account’, ‘temporary’, and ‘informal’ employment on the one hand; and the growing importance of this diversification for rural capital accumulation. Building on two recent research projects directed by the panel convenors on small-scale mining and farming labour, the wider ambition is to reflect on the importance of rural work in the aftermath of the age of ‘Labouring Man’ (Ferguson and Li 2018). Some questions this aftermath is concerned with include the (often thin) line of distinction between ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ work, between ‘city’ and ‘countryside’, and between work as productive and reproductive activity. Specifically, applicants should address at least one of these questions in reference to African case studies: what are the current interfaces between rural work and commodified labour? How are contemporary forms of work and labour reproduced? How are conditions of ‘freedom’ and ‘unfreedom’ reshuffled in the process?
Ferguson, J. and Li, T:M: (2018) Beyond the “proper job:” Political-economic analysis after the century of labouring man: PLaas working paper 51.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 30 September, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
This contribution examines the role of professional motorcycle taxi associations in eastern DRC in transforming the profession from an stopgap activity into a ‘proper job’. It discusses strategies, their results as well as structural, economic and political challenges.
Paper long abstract:
Being a motorcycle taxi driver or ‘motard’ is a widespread form of work in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Motards are present in urban as well as rural settings and serve as linkages between both spheres. Many riders are men between 18 and 35 and originate from a precarious background although students, graduates and skilled workers are also not uncommon. Their profession is however widely perceived as a temporary stop-gap, work “in between jobs” or even a “dead end” (Oldenburg 2019). This paper examines the role of professional associations in transforming motorcycle taxi driving from an unanchored stopgap activity into a ‘proper job’ (Ferguson & Li 2018) as well as structural, economic and political challenges. Recently, motorcycle taxi associations have multiplied and spread across eastern DRC, not least due to mandatory membership policies. Existing associations however differ greatly in size, geographical extend and the services they offer. Some are limited to a role as registrars of professionals and provide only limited assistance in negotiating with police and state institutions. In contrast, other associations have developed extensive welfare and social security schemes or provide their members with professional trainings both within the motorcycle taxi sector and beyond it. Thereby, they embed their members into long-term projects that contradict the reputation of their work as temporary and aim at transforming being a motard into an economically sustainable and socially accepted profession. Furthermore, associations attempt to win political and social recognition for a group that is often described as unruly outlaws.
Paper short abstract:
Negotiated around a social contract of benevolence and marginality, contemporary gleaning simultaneously confirms and decenters socio-economic hierarchies and invokes the possibilities of life entwined in-, yet transgressing racialised and gendered dispossession and ruination under late Capitalism.
Paper long abstract:
Gleaning describes the right of the subaltern to the remainder and the obligation of the dominant to produce and/or allow access to the remainder under the premise of marginality. This paper introduces gleaning trans-culturally and focuses on two examples from the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal. The first inquires how gleaning for molluscs safeguards deltaic waters as a female sphere by appeasing ancestral guardian spirits and evoking a longstanding female subalternity and norms of benevolence and mutual aid. This also obscures the profitability of gleaning. At the same time, gleaning allows women to eschew labour relations introduced e.g. by NGO projects. The second example inquires how deltaic deck hands gleaned molluscs from the bycatch of industrial trawlers. By performing the marginality of this bycatch while redescribing its value and exchanging it along female networks, they realised their own gains from it, renegotiated ownership and possession as well as labour, and turned trawlers from capitalist- into peri-capitalist sites (pointing into the opposite direction of salvage accumulation). Gleaning as what I term a ‘minor tactic’ thus creates distinct, if entwined niches of 'freedom' within conditions of 'unfreedom', that is, hierarchical socio-economic relations and their dynamics of dispossession and ruination. It is a fragile practice characterized by indeterminacy and limits requiring close attention to changing environmental and socio-economic contexts. It simultaneously confirms and decenters hierarchical relations across the rural-urban nexus, while figuring as a larger promise that questions the establishment of property and value and the character of work/labour and its alienation from the environment.
Paper short abstract:
I examine the strategies by which migrant artisanal gold miners in Madagascar cultivate belonging, as well as attendant consequences. I argue that miners' "enskilment"--embodied, socially-embedded learning-in-practice--makes life meaningful while also serving as an "affective subsidy" for capital.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines how rural laborers in migrant-dominated extractive landscapes conceptualize and cultivate belonging, as well as the consequences for local societies and economies. Drawing on ethnographic evidence from the goldfields of Betsiaka in Madagascar’s far north and leveraging the concept of “enskilment,” I explore how artisanal miners come to feel “at home in their bodies and in the presence of others,” both under and above ground. In analyzing enskilment in Betsiaka, I draw on three terms miners use to describe their dispositions towards mining labor and the social world of the diggings: zatra (accustomed), mahay (skilled or knowledgeable), and tamana (at home). By stressing how they are accustomed to difficult work and discomforting conditions; their mining skill and knowledge of geology, custom, taboos, and lore; and their feeling at home in the diggings, migrant miners assert claims, valorize their labor, and craft novel identities. Beyond driving a perceptible transformation in rural sociality, I contend that cultivating belonging via enskilment facilitates ongoing mobility and “flexible extraction” (hence forms of capitalist expansion), as laborers acquire necessary knowledge, skills, and connections, as well as an abiding confidence that the displacement of the latest bust will give way to opportunity and community forged in the crucible of the next boom. It thus simultaneously makes life meaningful for miners, shielding them from destitution and generating (non)economic forms of value, even freedom—while also serving as an affective subsidy for capital, as exploitation, accumulation, and forms of unfreedom persist and proliferate.