Grounded in both theory and ethnography, this volume insists on taking social positionality seriously when accounting for Africa’s current age of polarizing wealth. To this end, the book advocates a multidimensional view of African societies, in which social positions consist of a variety of intersecting social powers - or ‘capitals’ – including wealth, education, social relationships, religion, ethnicity, and others. Accordingly, the notion of social im/mobilities emphasizes the complexities of current changes, taking us beyond the prism of a one-dimensional social ladder, for social moves cannot always be apprehended through the binaries of ‘gains’ and ‘losses’.
Introduction: Theorizing Social Im/mobilities in Africa
Joël Noret
Chapter 1. Inequality from up Close: Qur’anic Students in Northern Nigeria Working as Domestics
Hannah Hoechner
Chapter 2. 'Born Free to Aspire?' An Ethnographic Study of Rural Youths’ Aspirations in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Fawzia Mazanderani
Chapter 3. Great Expectations and Uncertain Futures: Education and Social Im/mobility in Niamey, Niger
Gabriella Körling
Chapter 4. ‘Precarious Prosperity?’ Social Im/mobilities Among Young Entrepreneurs in Kampala
Laura Camfield and William Monteith
Chapter 5. ‘Here Men Are Becoming Women and Women Men’: Gender, Class, and Space in Maputo, Mozambique
Inge Tvedten, Arlindo Uate and Lizete Mangueleze
Chapter 6. The Dynamics of Inequality in the Congolese Copperbelt: A Discussion of Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Space
Benjamin Rubbers
Chapter 7. Crisis, Work and the Meanings of Mobility on the Zimbabwean-South African Border
Maxim Bolt
Chapter 8. Domestic Dramas: Class, Taste and Home Decoration in Buea, Cameroon
Ben Page
Conclusion: A Multidimensional Approach to Social Positionality in Africa
Joël Noret
Appendix I: Sample characteristics
Appendix II: Summary of entrepreneurs’ directions of social mobility
Index
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