Pub Date : 2023-10-11DOI: 10.1017/s0001972023000633
Peter Lockwood
Abstract Exploring the ‘hollow’ character of middle-class status in contemporary Kenya, this article shows how upwardly mobile young Kenyans struggle to cope with the expectations for distribution that their displays of achievement create. Focusing on the urbanizing peripheries of Nairobi, it shows how accusations of envy ( wivu ) made about poorer friends and relatives reflect their anxieties about failing to act as the providers they are expected to be. Anticipation of the disappointment and resentment of their would-be dependants encourages them to withdraw from friendships and kinship relations in their home neighbourhoods, and seek instead an impersonal life in new urban enclaves closer to Nairobi. The avoidance of obligation is justified through discourses of individual effort and achievement, while poorer peers and relations are criticized for looking to rely on others. The article shows how such tensions over obligation and desires for withdrawal illuminate the fragility of Kenya’s emerging middle class and the ‘ironies of accomplishment’ – that their very precarity denies these Kenyans the respect and status they desire in their neighbourhood homes.
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Pub Date : 2023-10-11DOI: 10.1017/s0001972023000682
Peer Schouten
Khalid Mustafa Medani, Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pb £22.99 – 978 1 009 25772 5; open access – 978 1 108 96101 1). 2022, 426 pp. - Volume 93 Issue 4
{"title":"Khalid Mustafa Medani, Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pb £22.99 – 978 1 009 25772 5; open access – 978 1 108 96101 1). 2022, 426 pp.","authors":"Peer Schouten","doi":"10.1017/s0001972023000682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0001972023000682","url":null,"abstract":"Khalid Mustafa Medani, Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pb £22.99 – 978 1 009 25772 5; open access – 978 1 108 96101 1). 2022, 426 pp. - Volume 93 Issue 4","PeriodicalId":7464,"journal":{"name":"Africa","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136209275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-11DOI: 10.1017/s000197202300061x
Ben Jones, Sarah Amongin
Abstract Savings groups are an important feature of life in rural Uganda and elsewhere. They have been celebrated as an ‘alternative’, community-based approach to economic development with a particular focus on empowering women. In this article we offer a more critical perspective, showing how a savings group in a village in eastern Uganda informs more general experiences of financialization. Joining the group was not really an ‘alternative’ to other forms of finance and was often a first step to securing loans from moneylenders, microfinance institutions and commercial banks. We show how poorer members of the group, typically women, ‘rented out’ their membership to wealthier villagers. Members also used the Friday meetings to socialize and to build political careers, and to reflect critically on experiences of financialization. ‘Money looks for money’, a phrase new to the area, interrogates these socialities and inequalities, as part of the seemingly inexorable pull of loans, interest and financialized debt.
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Pub Date : 2023-10-11DOI: 10.1017/s0001972023000657
Mesrob Vartavarian
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
此内容的摘要不可用，因此提供了预览。有关如何访问此内容的信息，请使用上面的获取访问链接。
{"title":"Entangled oligarchies: structure, agency and rent seeking in South Africa","authors":"Mesrob Vartavarian","doi":"10.1017/s0001972023000657","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0001972023000657","url":null,"abstract":"An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.","PeriodicalId":7464,"journal":{"name":"Africa","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136209506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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