Multi-disciplinary examination of the role of ordinary African people as agents in the generation and distribution of well-being in modern Africa.What are the fundamental issues, processes, agency and dynamics that shape the political economy of life in modern Africa? In this book, the contributors - experts in anthropology, history, political science, economics, conflict and peace studies, philosophy and language - examine the opportunities and constraints placed on living, livelihoods and sustainable life on the continent. Reflecting on why and how the political economy of life approach is essential for understanding the social process in modern Africa, they engage with the intellectual oeuvre of the influential Africanist economic anthropologist Jane Guyer, who provides an Afterword. The contributors analyse the politicaleconomy of everyday life as it relates to money and currency; migrant labour forces and informal and formal economies; dispossession of land; debt and indebtedness; socio-economic marginality; and the entrenchment of colonial andapartheid pasts. Wale Adebanwi is the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at the University of Oxford. He is author of Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning (University of Rochester Press).

Foreword - James FergusonApproaching the Political Economy of Everyday Life: An Introduction - Wale AdebanwiPART I - MONEY MATTERS: CURRENCY AND FISCAL LIFE STRUGGLESCattle, Currencies and the Politics of Commensuration on a Colonial Frontier - John and Jean ComaroffCurrency and Conflict in Colonial Nigeria - David PrattenCoercion or Trade? Multiple Self-realization during the Rubber Boom in German Kamerun (1899-1913) - Peter L GeschiereCoercion or Trade? Multiple Self-realization during the Rubber Boom in German Kamerun (1899-1913) - Tristan OestermannThe Macroeconomics of Marginal Gains: Africa's Lessons to Social Theorists - Celestin MongaPART II - LABOUR, SOCIAL LIVES AND PRECARITYFrom Enslavement to Precarity? The Labour Question in African History - Frederick CooperNavigating Formality in a Migrant Labour Force - Maxim BoltPART III - MARGINALITY, DISAFFECTION AND BIO-ECONOMIC DISTRESSPrecarious Life: Violence and Poverty Under Boko Haram and MEND - Michael J. WattsThe Debt Imperium: Relations of Owing after Apartheid - Anne-Maria MakhuluMarginal Men and Social Conflicts in Nigeria: Okada Riders in Lagos - Gbemisola AnimasawunSopona, Social Relations and the Political Economy of Colonial Smallpox Control in Ekiti, Nigeria - Elisha P. RennePART IV - HISTORY, TEMPORALITY, AGENCY AND DEMOCRATIC LIFEHistory as Value Added? Valuing the Past in Africa - Sara S. BerryCultural Mediation, Colonialism and Politics: Colonial "Truchement", Postcolonial Translator - Souleymane Bachir Diagne"Kos'ona Miran?" Patronage, Prebendalism and Democratic Life in Contemporary Nigeria - Adigun AgbajeAFTERWORD: The Landscapes Beyond the Margins: Agency, Optimization and the Power of the Empirical - Jane Guyer