The Gaddi community of the Indian Himalayas experience the present as fraught with various, entangled pressures 鈥� pressure to ensure upward social mobility and inclusion in India鈥檚 middle class, pressure to secure stable domestic incomes, pressure to maintain sexual and gendered propriety. Written by , this piece examines how such pressures are not evenly distributed across the community but are absorbed by particular people through the experience of bodily and mental 鈥榯ension鈥�. 鈥榯ension鈥�, Simpson argues, both registers these pressures in the body, and allows people to push back against them, issuing a particular and paradoxical account of power and the body.
A view of the Dhaula Dhar range from below. Photograph by the author.
The Gaddi people, who inhabit the lower foothills of the Indian Himalayan Dhaula Dhar range, experienced a number of structural transformations in the past century. An ecological crisis, precipitated by neo-colonial environmental policies, has dramatically shifted their landscape. They have given up their traditional agro-pastoral livelihood in favour of waged labour as pastures and properties in Himalayan foothills have become enclosed.聽 Hierarchies of caste and social status have become unyoked from livelihood practices. They have shifted their religious practice from Shaivite animism toward more muscular Hindu mainstream religion. Their practices of kinship and marriage have become increasingly nuclearized, dependent on a. As a result of these changes, the Gaddi community experience the present as fraught with various, entangled pressures 鈥� pressure to ensure upward social mobility and inclusion in India鈥檚 middle class, pressure to secure stable domestic incomes in a boom-and-bust entrepreneurial economy, pressure to maintain sexual and gendered propriety in an increasingly politicised public sphere.
Neoclassical economics 鈥� and contemporary extensions of it 鈥� has an outsized presence in academic and policy making circuits. This position of privilege builds upon more than a century of theoretical development, comprising the contemporary 鈥渕ainstream鈥� of economic science. The characteristics and rise of this mainstream, determined in many cases by means beyond pure intellectual merit, has been regularly documented in the existing scholarship.
Economic imperialism has been one of the results of mainstream dominance, and its academic impact on other social sciences has been widely documented, including their corresponding areas of policy making. In this regard, I present here an approach to the problematic relationship between Neoclassical Urban Economics and Urban Planning. These are two related social science disciplines, which however have very different epistemologies and approaches to policy advice.
The main difference between academic mainstream Economics and Urban Planning is methodological, in terms of what is considered a valid approach to scientific knowledge. Economics builds upon logical positivism; it first performs deductive theory construction that 鈥渄escribes鈥� reality, and then subsequently tests its theoretical predictions, which in some cases (not all the cases) lead to policy prescriptions. In contrast, Urban Planning is an action-oriented and problem-solving scientific discipline. It inductively produces normative theory, which explicitly shows the analyst鈥檚 point of view regarding the topic and how to intervene on it (public policy advice).
Mainstream Economics is in essence defined by the method and theoretical approach, not by the topic (the economy). This allows it to engage with a wide variety of topics, one of them being the spatial analysis of the built environment, which is also the topic of academic Urban Planning.
Since 2017, Cotonou 鈥� the economic capital of Benin 鈥� has witnessed several urban development projects. Aiming to showcase the city as the new face of a new Benin, attractive to both businessmen and tourists, the plans have involved extensive tarmacking projects, the development of the city鈥檚 first shopping malls, the rebuilding of several markets to 鈥榤odern鈥� standards, the erection of emblematic statues 鈥� notably that of 鈥樷��, branded as an ode to feminine courage and a national emblem 鈥�, and the design of a new coast line. The urban poor have paid a disproportionate price in the implementation of this new 鈥� that is, a shiny urban renovation project disconnected from the sociological realities of the city and from the needs of whole swathes of its population, especially in the urban precariat.
In what follows, we argue that the successive waves of evictions of thousands of poor urban dwellers have pressurized in multiple ways and in the longer run already fragile existences. As neighbourhoods and livelihood were dislocated, their ex-residents were simultaneously witnessing their life chances shrinking for the foreseeable future, and faced with the traumatic aftermath of dislocated homes. A 鈥榞enerative鈥� process in itself, as Gunv贸r Jonsson recently argued on this blog about evictions in Dakar, there is no doubt that state pressure grounded in neoliberal urbanism affects the urban poor in multiple ways. The following paragraphs explore such multi-layered consequences, from degraded economic conditions to tarnished senses of one鈥檚 place in the social world.
Figure 1: The old terminus building in Dakar, known simply as 鈥淟a Gare鈥�
During my early days of fieldwork in the old city centre of Dakar, Senegal, I was sitting with the trader Fatim in her tiny market stall under a tattered, weather-worn parasol. Fatim watched over her goods that were balanced on top of some old, repurposed metal drums. The rusty tracks of the former Dakar-Niger railway line stretched out on the ground behind us, forming the backdrop to this small outdoor market. A few dozen other rickety stalls were lined up along the old platform that led to the abandoned terminus building known simply as 鈥�La Gare鈥� (Figure 1). Fatim thrust her arm out to indicate the space around her and exclaimed, 鈥極ften, when people come here, they look around and say, 鈥淭here is nothing here! …Some people think the market at the Terminus (March茅 de la Gare) doesn’t exist anymore, so they don’t come鈥�.
The Terminus (La Gare) was the last station at the end of the Dakar-Niger railway line. The line had formerly connected the landlocked Malian capital, Bamako, to the Senegalese capital on the Atlantic coast. During the first decade of decolonisation a thriving Malian wholesale and retail market – leMarch茅 de la Gare 鈥� had emerged at the Dakar Terminus. When I arrived in Dakar in 2013 to conduct fieldwork, however, the passenger train, on which the Malian shuttle traders supplying the market had travelled, was no longer running; and the flourishing Malian market at the Terminus no longer existed. In 2003, under pressure from the World Bank, the Malian and Senegalese governments had privatized the formerly State-owned rail network. In 2009, the Senegalese passenger train running between the Malian border and Dakar was discontinued. In the same year, the Malian market at the Dakar terminus was bulldozed by Senegalese authorities, supposedly to make way for 鈥淭he Seven Wonders of Dakar鈥� (, accessed 7th of June 2023) – a prestigious, but as yet unfinished, construction project.
In this blog post I explore how the traders evicted from the Terminus had responded to persistent uncertainty and economic pressure following the demolition of their market. Rapid and unequal urban developments are occurring across the world, and particularly in the fast-growing cities of Africa. Such developments lead to disruption, uprooting and disorientation, creating immense economic and psychological pressures on urban traders whose livelihoods depend on working in a specific location in the city and accessing certain infrastructures and networks in that space, to connect with suppliers, customers, and middlemen. The following analysis explores what is produced by these pressures 鈥� not in a naively optimistic sense of 鈥済ood things emerging鈥� from pressure, but in a temporal sense of understanding the long-term outcomes produced by pressure. Specifically, I argue that the economic uncertainty and sense of disorientation and uprootedness associated with eviction from the Dakar Terminus had led to a kind of urban diasporic formation among the displaced traders. The analysis thus contributes a temporal perspective on pressure, showing what urban dwellers鈥� responses to pressure may generate in the longer term.
The burgeoning scholarship over the past several decades documenting youth stalled in their quest for adulthood, the scholarship on waiting, on restless underemployed laborers buying time in the informal economy, on the crisis of African masculinities, on the accumulating material and psychic pressures of unmet familial and community responsibilities 鈥� all these are ways of depicting the longue dur茅e of failure best contextualized within the beguiled patriarchal promise of colonial civilizing missions: the breadwinning wage.
In this blog, I draw from my recent book, , to explore how socioeconomic forces particular to the postcolonial African city induce a permanent state of pressure among young men at the interrupted point of social becoming. Observing that the crisis of work is also a crisis of masculinity, I historicize the pressures of late capitalism in African cities 鈥� namely, surviving in informal economies 鈥� within the longue dur茅e of the wage economy. I show how the introduction of wage labor during European colonial rule produced at its outset an overwhelmingly unachievable male breadwinner norm. The salary was both an entitlement and a source of intense pressure as it produced a novel form of patriarchal privilege but also the social and domestic responsibilities that came to collapse manhood with this exceptional, and exceptionally rare, form of economic activity. Examining these pressures within the long shadow of colonialism critically illuminates the role of race-making and racial difference in the emergence of financial expectation and deeply personalized societal failure among contemporary urban African men.
鈥淚 have lived everything there is to be lived in this city. Now I need to leave because all that is left for me here is misery and I want a better life for my child.鈥�
It is with these words that Tizita, a 21-year-old mother-of-one from Gojjam in northern Ethiopia, described her dismay at life in Addis Ababa when I interviewed her in 2022. After living in the Ethiopian capital for eight years, she had had enough. Tizita was set on moving to one of the Gulf States, a part of the world from where many of the women she met on the street had returned from and were planning to re-migrate to. Having previously worked as a domestic worker in Addis Ababa, and having learnt that sex work was the only way to make 鈥�real money鈥� in the city, the young woman remained focused on meeting the fundamental purpose of her migration project: transforming her life. 聽
For Fikadu, a 27-year-old man from Wollega in western Ethiopia, the strain of life in the city is similar, yet different. Unlike for young women like Tizita, whose income-earning activities are overwhelmingly limited to domestic work, petty street work, commercial sex work and begging, the fractions of the informal economy available to migrant men are slightly wider. Nevertheless, this is not to say that times have not been hard. Having previously worked as a street vendor selling second-hand clothes, Fikadu has had to downscale his work and is struggling to meet the rising costs of food, rent, sending money to his family of origin, and realising his plans for the future:
鈥�Our supplies disappeared and when they were back, the price went up by more than double. That was the end of it. Now I pay for my life here by selling socks, but I don鈥檛 let that dismay me. I remain focused on my plans of transforming my life here, and once things improve I will start saving for my own metalwork shop.鈥�
The testimonies of Tizita and Fikadu form part of a longitudinal qualitative research project that maps the livelihood strategies of a sample of migrant youth in Addis Ababa at two points in time between 2018 and 2022. Drawing on these findings, this blog outlines some of the ways in which rural-urban migrant youth between the ages of 15-27 experience and counteract pressure. Through an exploration of migrants鈥� everyday strategies of navigating the city, findings presented here show how dealing with the intricacies of urban life relates intimately to the lives rural youth left behind and the imaginary futures they aspire towards, the ways in which youth relate to the social and economic responsibilities they carry, and the manner in which subjective pressure experienced by women and men has a compounding effect that further exacerbates the challenges migrant youth face.
Women are the reason why men have changed because women are hard on men. [鈥 The expectations they come with into a relationship, and generally how they have been brought up, or the life they live, that is what gives some men stress. [鈥 When someone is living with a woman in the house, you find that issues are many because money is little.
Wellington Ochieng, 36-year old labor migrant from western Kenya
During almost three years of ethnographic fieldwork among male migrants in , I heard complaints like Wellington鈥檚 almost daily. Migrant men, in my case predominantly Luo from western Kenya who came to Nairobi with high expectations of a better future, bemoaned a life full of pressure caused by the romantic, sexual, and economic expectations of their girlfriends, wives, and rural kin. The blame often lay on 鈥榗ity girls鈥� who were portrayed as materialistic 鈥榮lay queens鈥檞ho 鈥榝inish鈥� men by leaving them bankrupt only to suck away the after grabbing him with their 鈥楤eelzebub nails鈥� as Wellington called the colorful nails sported by many Nairobi women. Soon, so a fear expressed repeatedly by my interlocutors, most men would no longer be needed at all and Kenya鈥檚 economy would be ruled by economically powerful women who raise chaotic boys brought up . Such fears of male expendability also manifested in imaginations about a future in which more and more men and women would live in or 鈥榗ontract marriages鈥� that replace trust and love with contractual agreements. When my flat mate Samuel, a student of economics divorced from the mother of his baby son, returned to our apartment after passing the neighbor鈥檚 house where a group of women celebrated a birthday, for instance, he just shook his head and sighed: 鈥榃e live like animals in the jungle. Women and men separately. We only meet for mating and making babies. Maybe that鈥檚 where we鈥檙e heading to.鈥� Overwhelmed by their wives鈥� and girlfriends鈥� expectations, many migrant men who spoke to me in Pipeline decided to spend as little time as possible in their marital houses. Instead, they evaded pressure by lifting weights in gyms, , , gulping down a cold beer in a Wines & Spirits, playing the videogame FIFA, or catcalling 鈥榖rown-skinned鈥� Kamba women on the roads. Some men who could no longer cope took even more drastic measures involving murder and . One man, for instance, cut the throat of his girlfriend only to try to kill himself, while another tried to poison himself, later quoting the wife鈥檚 actions and character as the cause. Anything appeared better than spending time with the 鈥榙aughters of Jezebel鈥� who were waiting for them in the cramped houses of Pipeline, sometimes demanding migrant men to engage in romantic and sexual practices they were unfamiliar with as expounded upon by Wellington:
When you come to Nairobi, our girls want that you hold her hand when you are going to buy chips, you hug her when you are going to the house, I hear there is something called cuddling, she wants that you cuddle, at what time will you cuddle and tomorrow you want to go to work early?[鈥 you don鈥檛 go to meet your friends so that you show her you love her, you just sleep on the sofa and caress her hair, to me, this is nonsense because that is not romantic love, I think that romantic love, so long as I provide the things I provide, and we sire children, I think that鈥檚 enough romance. [鈥 Another girl told me to lick her, and I asked her 鈥榃hy do you want me to lick you?鈥� She said that she wanted me to lick her private parts. Are those places licked? [鈥 Those things are things that people see on TV, let us leave them to the people on TV.
Wherever you go in contemporary Nairobi, you will find yourself confronted with images of economic success. Whether the suited and smiling young professionals on the Safaricom billboards, celebrating the speed of their new data bundles, the fleet of range-rovers that block the streets in the gridlock hours of commuting, or the synthetic marbled fortresses (the office towers, the luxury flats) 鈥� Nairobi鈥檚 wealth announces itself over and above the streets below: Streets of kiosks selling warm soda, vendors (鈥�Mama Mbogas鈥� 鈥� the stereotypical figure of market trader women selling vegetables and fruits from the city鈥檚 rural hinterlands), construction workers eating chapo (chapatis)on breaks; Streets of boda-boda (motorcycle) drivers talking to each other in the sun, streets of fundis (mechanics) hammering crumpled matatu minivan doors back into shape; Streets where students gather in groups outside the University of Nairobi, where aspiring politicians argue in Jevanjee Gardens. Images of wealth barely conceal inequality, the reality of the informal economy in which the majority of Kenyans work with their ingenuity and hands to accrue cash, the lifeblood of social reproduction.
Drawing on over 21 months of fieldwork conducted on the changing peri-urban peripheries of Nairobi,[1] this blog draws attention not only towards the city鈥檚 shifting landscape of urban inequality, but also desire 鈥� of aspirations for better lives, membership in a developing Kenya evoked by the visible presence of vast wealth, evident especially in the material lifestyles of the city鈥檚 nouveaux riches, whether wealthy business and political elites or the posh 鈥�mapunk鈥�, a pejorative Sheng term for those youth wealthy enough to have grown outside the ghetto. But for the Kenya鈥檚 aspirant youth, the city鈥檚 landscape of inequality is experienced not so much as a fixed condition but as a subjective and personal challenge to succeed, to 鈥榤ake it鈥� to a middle-class standard of living possessed by others. The failure to do so produces subjective experiences of stress, failure and disappointment, the product of comparison with the wealth of others. Rather than purely economic pressure, this blog seeks to foreground the mental pressures produced by this landscape of desire, and the pressure to succeed.
As the editors of this blog series write, 鈥榚conomic pressure and stress are not confined to the urban poor鈥�. Of Kenya鈥檚 鈥榟ustler masses鈥�, the 80 per cent of the country鈥檚 inhabitants who work in the informal economy. The figure of the 鈥榟ustler鈥� regularly evokes a young man, living in one of Nairobi鈥檚 informal settlements, struggling day-to-day for his immediate needs. And yet, as this brief portrait of Nairobi suggests, finer grain distinctions are possible that reveal more complex relationships with 鈥榚conomic pressure鈥� that do not simply amount to the short-term temporalities of day-to-day survival. Whilst short-term needs are hardly absent from Kenyans鈥� economic subjectivities and their careful modes of economisation, in the long-term Kenyans work hard to accumulate the wealth that affords participation in the New Kenya, and, not incidentally, status and recognition from others. Consider, for instance, the Kenyans pursuing success from such predicaments of economic uncertainty.
鈥�Lazima huu mwaka niwashangazi鈥�, sings Jaguar in his 2015 hit (This Year). 鈥楾his year I鈥檒l blow their minds!鈥�. Jaguar鈥檚 narrator is an aspirant Kenyan whose motivation is not simply self, but self in relation to others 鈥� a rural migrant who desires the status and recognition from his kinsmen and neighbours whence he returns from the city with the wealth he has won. 鈥楢 good job, a good house, a good wife鈥� (鈥�Kazi nzuri! Nyumba nzuri! Bibi nzuri!鈥�), he sings, imagining the future that lies ahead. 鈥業鈥檒l be a rich man like Sonko鈥�, he tells us, a play on words in reference to Nairobi鈥檚 now former Governor Michael Mbuvi Sonko, a man who has quite literally appropriated the term 鈥�sonko鈥�, meaning 鈥榬ich person鈥� (or sometimes 鈥榖oss鈥�). Regardless of the true origins of his wealth, his identity is one of a 鈥榟ustler鈥� who has 鈥榤ade it鈥� in life.
Such optimism recalls the now famous narrative that the African continent is 鈥榬ising鈥� 鈥� that economic growth is catapulting countries towards middle-income status, creating new middle classes able to live lives of conspicuous consumption. Since the end of Daniel arap Moi鈥檚 de facto one-party state, and the political and economic liberalisation ushered in under Kenya鈥檚 Rainbow Coalition (2002-2005), economic growth has shaped the intensification of desires for middle-class lifestyles and their material trappings.
At the same time, such narratives belie the immense economic pressure faced by Kenyans on their pathways towards prosperity. Indeed, the sheer discrepancy between piecemeal incomes (gleaned through irregular labour in Nairobi) and the pressure to succeed, gives rise to feelings of failure, shame, and distress. Such affective states readily evoke 鈥榩ressure鈥� rather than aspiration, as the authors of this series call it: 鈥榓 cognitive assessment of a real/imagined disbalance between real/imagined economic demands and the real/imagined ability to fulfil them.鈥�
黑料社区 