The description of Africa as a continent in perpetual crisis, ubiquitous in the popular media and in policy and development circles, is at once obvious and obfuscating. This collection by leading ethnographers moves beyond the rhetoric of African crisis to theorize peoples everyday practices under volatile conditions not of their own making.
From Ghanaian hiplife music to the U.S. diversity lottery in Togo, from politicos in Cte d'Ivoire to squatters in South Africa, the essays in Hard Work, Hard Times uncover the imaginative ways in which African subjects make and remake themselves and their worlds, and thus make do, get by, get over, and sometimes thrive.
Contributors: Beth A. Buggenhagen, Stephen Jackson, Anne-Maria Makhulu, Mike McGovern, Charles Piot, Dorothea E. Schulz, and Jesse Weaver Shipley
The College of Arts