book review of Money at the Margins

Cities, 1995

This article aims to show how the authorities interfere in the fight for central space, using the medium-sized town of Kassala (in the Sudan) as an example. The analysis of various government interventions in the Kassala town centre indicates that decision makers generally have little concern for the interests of the most vulnerable groups, especially under the present administration. They are led by ill-considered, class based ideas of what a 'modern' city should look like. This implies that 'unsuitable' forms of activity (street vendors, craftsmen) and shelter (old houses, mud shops, simple sheds) are removed to allow for the construction of new, multistorey shops, offices, hotels and apartments. Although the government tries to provide the victims with an alternative outside the central area, they usually overestimate their financial capacity, while underestimating their attachment to the centre. Furthermore, the 'unofficial' users of the zones intended for redevelopment are either completely disregarded for compensation or have to make do with a mere pittance.

The Relocation of the 'Ark' Shelter as a Case Study of Citizenship Issues in a Mutating Durban (South Africa)' Le déménagement, d'une zone à l'autre de la ville-centre, d'un refuge pour indigents (l'Ark Christian Ministries'), est une initiative très controversée et émotive. Quelle sorte de passions ce déménagement relâche-t-il? Comment l'expliquer et quelles en sont les implications en termes de citoyenneté et de gouvernance? Ce changement est vite devenu plus qu'un problème administratif: une affaire publique faite d'affaires dans l'affaire, incluant des faits, des actes et des acteurs douteux, une institutiontrès particulière, des poursuites en justice pour agressions sexuelles envers mineure, des allégations de racisme, et impliquant la responsabilité des autorités publiques au niveau local, provincial et national. Le papier explore les différentes définitions des 'problèmes' que cette affaire soulève selon ses protagonistes, c'est-à-dire: 1) les représentations sociales en jeu dans la controverse, pour commencer de ceux qui sont supposés 'venir avec l'Ark', et ensuite du quartier et de la communauté d'Albert Park; 2) la politique que le transfert de l'Ark est supposée représenter, en relation avec les autres politiques de la ville, en particulier le renouveau du centre-ville et la politique de logement ou face aux sans-abri; 3) la méthode de gouvernance impliquée dans la gestion politicoadministrative de l'affaire, à l'égard de l'Ark et de ses« clients» comme de la communauté d'Albert Park. Enfin, le papier élabore plus avant les principales questions émergeant de l'analyse: les contradictions entre les politiques dont le cas relève; la place des pauvres dans la ville; la place des citoyens et le sort des valeurs de la citoyenneté tel qu'il se trouve engagé dans l'affaire.

JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE

The research is related to social problems. People's lives are actually changing with the times. In the process of the changing, sometimes unexpected conditions arise or should not occur. This unexpected condition gradually becomes a polemic and has a negative impact on people's lives. This condition is called a social problem. Social problems cannot be ignored because they can disrupt global economic and political stability. The discussion of this research focuses on two social problems: poverty and prostitution. Poverty is the condition of a person who has no wealth, lacks, or has very low income and of course cannot fulfill his daily needs; while poverty is also closely related to prostitution. One can become a prostitute because of poverty or circumstances. Prostitution is a sexual activity outside the institution of marriage and is generally carried out by women. These two social problems can be found not only in the novel but also in the real world; so the sociology of...

Critical African Studies

View related articles View Crossmark data 'Don't you want us to eat?': the moral economy of a Ugandan marketplace 'Ne voulez-vous pas que nous mangions?': L'économie morale d'un marché ougandais

Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India, 2019

From the chapter: Neoliberalism and right-wing Hindu nationalism complement one another as they both see divisions within society as unnecessary, if not pathological, and create bounded internal and external realms (e.g. the Muslim other, or the welfare agency) in their rhetoric of ongoing revolutionary transformation. However, and here we turn towards the source of trouble on Mangaluru's streets, whereas the individualism celebrated by economic liberalism offers 'freedom' (whilst holding the market supreme and punishing those who disrupt it), the individual within a majoritarian vision is always subordinated to the good of the Hindu community. This entwines with a perceived loss of national sovereignty with the deepening penetration of global capital, leading to attempts at controlling 'national culture', more often than not in ways that uphold rigid conceptions of gender and sexual identities. As such, and as I will detail below, there is an ethical tension at the heart of this Hindu majoritarian and market-led development project: the continuing ‘opening-up’ of the Indian economy has also opened-up ethical questions. The same groups who celebrate ‘India’s moment’ after centuries of national impediment due to Muslim, colonial and then ‘socialist’ rule are also often those who are deeply troubled by the effects of these changes in terms of cultural purity, gender norms, and youthful experimentation. Moral policing, I argue, is one of the ways in which this ethical tension reveals itself. I will make this argument based on material gathered during 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2011-2016.

Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2017

The political evolution of Kampala under the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has profoundly affected the fortunes of the city's street vendors. This article examines the effects of institutional changes brought about by the NRM's efforts to monopolize power in the city, arguing that the twin forces of democratization and decentralization allowed street vending to flourish while the reversal of these processes precipitated its dramatic decline. Democratization and decentralization initiated a period of intense political competition in which vendors could trade political support for protection from politicians who were more interested in political survival than the implementation of policy. This ability was lost when the central government introduced a new city government that shifted the balance of power from elected politicians to appointed technocrats. The new city government has since sought legitimacy through development and urban management initiatives that aim to transform Kampala into a supposedly modern, well-organized city. In doing so, it has sought to eradicate street vending, a practice it sees as the antithesis of and an obstacle to its ambitions. Lacking the channels for political influence that they previously enjoyed, street vendors have been forced to face the full brunt of government repression.

African Studies Review, 2018

This article explores the intersections of violence, morality, and place to theorize the notion of moral violence. Using narratives collected during ethnographic research in a highway town in Kenya, it suggests that when people offer moralizing sentiments about this locality they are pointing to (and sometimes reproducing) the effects of and anxieties about the decades of violence and inequalities that have engulfed the lives of the residents. Particular attention is paid to the way in which narratives about political/ethnic violence and HIV/AIDS have blended to create and sustain moral violence as a chronic and particular, historically embedded variant of structural violence. Résumé: Cet article explore les confluences de la violence et de la moralité ainsi que le lieu où il est possible de théoriser la notion de violence morale. En utilisant des récits recueillis lors d'une recherche ethnographique dans une ville du Kenya, cet article suggère que lorsque les gens expriment des sentiments moralisateurs à propos de cette localité, ils signalent (et parfois reproduisent) les effets et les angoisses de décennies de violence et d'inégalités qui ont submergées la vie des résidents. Une attention particulière est accordée à la manière dont les récits sur la violence politique / ethnique et le VIH / SIDA se sont mélangés pour créer et maintenir la violence morale en tant que variante chronique et particulière, historiquement intégrée à la violence structurelle.

International Development Planning Review, 41:1, 2019

This article addresses evolving ways of governing urban informality that increasingly draw upon the management of space. Drawing inspiration from governmentality studies, the article examines contemporary governmental strategies of spatial enclosure and expulsion deployed upon street vendors in Kampala, in the context of an ambitious urban transformation agenda and a recentralisation of political authority. The article uncovers the complex configuration of actors involved in the realisation and contes-tation of such spatial strategies, the messy political interactions and the multiple lines of tension they generate, thus questioning simplistic conceptual oppositions and coherent categories. The contradictory agency of the vendors comes to light, encompassing both resistance and active participation in their own enclosure. The state, far from operating as a cohesive repressive force, emerges as deeply divided around the fate of street vendors, suggesting that ways of governing informality play a central role in struggles for power among state actors. The article also explores the outcomes of dominant spatial strategies of governance in Kampala, both in terms of the effects on the targeted population and of the limits of these strategies for the intended transformation of the city.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion (Janice Boddy & Michael Lambek Eds.), 2013

American Anthropologist, 2004

Understanding globalization is probably the most crucial task facing social scientists today and many scholars are confronting the challenge. One can battle over which perspective is the most fruitful, but Arjun Appadurai's claim in his edited volume, Globalization, is to use all possible methods and tools to comprehend the changes that are on us. This ingenious collection, many chapters republished from Public Culture, ranges from analyses of art and textiles to political economy. Appadurai cites the urgency of the situation, as well as the historical patterns of inequality, to incorporate a wide variety of perspectives and methods. Although most of the articles explore new areas from unusual angles, perhaps the one kind of article missing from this collection is the "on the ground" ethnography of the banking practices of the elite or grassroots resistance from below. I am concerned about the scholarly and social implications of the postmodern emphasis on images, imagineries, tropes, financescapes, ethnoscapes, ideoscapes, and mediascapesapproaches that skim the exotic, colorful, and glittering surfaces of globalization. Appadurai has previously avoided locating power or defining empire or the corporate forces of privatization and investment, which characterize globalization in the second millennium. Nevertheless, recently Appadurai appears to have landed lightly on earth, both in his recognition of capitalist predation in his introduction and in his research on Mumbai (to be found in later issues of Public Culture). His introductory remarks in Globalization read with an appropriate sense of urgency. There is concern for the gravity of the subject and the wrongs being perpetrated through a continuing process of capital accumulation by dispossession. But you will still not find in these pages any systematic analysis of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, or the World Trade Organization. Nor will you find any explicit recognition of the ongoing demonstrations against globalization or, apart from Saskia Sassen's analysis of the state, any detailed examination of the increasing gap between rich and poor. You will not read much about the persistent injuries of uneven development or the ongoing destruction of working-class communities. Although the chapters collected by Appadurai fall short of grappling with the institutional structures and inequities that make globalization perhaps the primary problem now confronting anthropology, the collection nonetheless pro