By Nicolette Makovicky and J枚rg Wiegratz
Faced with rampant fraud and corruption, government and civic actors in Slovakia and Uganda have in response turned to appeals to discourses of public ethics, and personal responsibility, and patriotism rather than addressing issues of political economy and power.
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叠测听J枚rg Wiegratz,听Catherine聽Dolan,听Wangui Kimari 补苍诲听Mario Schmidt
2020 may well be remembered as the year the global economy shut down. Airports have been closed, stock markets have crashed, and workers have been laid off en masse while politicians discuss if and how to reopen and restructure the economy. According to snapshot data, this economic turmoil has precipitated a global surge in anxiety, as people worry about their immediate and future financial situations. Their jobs, livelihoods and businesses, their incomes and finances, their assets and investments, their social relations and family ties, and their plans and dreams of economic progression, all seem on the brink of being fundamentally devalued. A now ubiquitous government response to COVID-19 – national lockdowns 鈥� has mandated the working class to stay home and worry about health first and livelihoods later. This dictate has pulverised the livelihoods of millions of people within a matter of days. Curfews, travel restrictions and other measures put into place to stop the spread of the virus are in the process of ravaging entire economic sectors (e.g. tourism and air travel, energy, export agriculture, personal services), undermining the prospect of growth for years to come. The hardest hit, however, are the poorest members of society: factory workers in India who left the cities and walked home to their villages in , garment factory workers facing hunger and unexpected levels of poverty, as well as droves of US-Americans for food stamps. All round is a picture of jobs lost, wages unpaid, contracts cancelled, futures foreclosed, and and desperation for millions.Read More »
叠测听J枚rg Wiegratz,听Catherine聽Dolan,听Wangui Kimari 补苍诲听Mario Schmidt
Research on economic pressure in Africa has been approached from diverse vantage points.聽 While economists frame 鈥榩ressure鈥� as a consequence of market failures, or as a such as or technological and political change, anthropologists who zoom in on the economic pressures individuals face in their , i.e. the lived experiences of those who are 鈥榰nder pressure鈥� have focused more on topics such as uncertainty and precarity. Alternatively, economic psychologists tend to naturalise pressure as an individual response to an adverse financial situation, eclipsing the varied ways pressure is intertwined with and shaped by broader societal transformations, power structures, social relations and obligations, and webs of exchange. There are currently no studies we are aware of that focus on the multi-faceted societal constitution of economic pressure in capitalist Africa, or that compare how pressure is experienced across gender, generation or socioeconomic groups.Read More »
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