Description
Book SynopsisOnce lauded as the wave of the African future, Zambia's economic boom in the 1960s and early 1970s was fueled by the export of copper and other primary materials. Since the mid-1970s the urban economy has rapidly deteriorated. This title explores the social and cultural responses to this prolonged period of sharp economic decline.
Trade Review"Ferguson is an astute analyst of ideologies of development and the misunderstandings they can generate." * Foreign Affairs *
"Ferguson presents a set of stimulating and important theoretical ideas." * American Ethnologust *
"[A] remarkable, deeply satisfying book." * Journal of Asian and African Studies *
"[Ferguson] has . . . exposed the need for a fresh set of intellectual resources to protect new generations from another set of false promises of development." * Canadian Journal of Sociology *
"Ferguson stands as a strong voice against the modernization paradigm." * On Politics: Journal of the University of Victoria Undergraduates of Political Science *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Cases
Acknowledgments
I. The Copperbelt in Theory
From "Emerging Africa" to the Ethnography of Decline
2. Expectations of Permanence
Mobile Workers, Modernist Narratives, and the "Full
House" of Urban-Rural Residential Strategies
3. Rural Connections, Urban Styles
Theorizing Cultural Dualism
4· "Back to the Land"?
The Micropolitical Economy of "Return" Migration
5. Expectations of Domesticity
Men, Women, and "the Modern Family"
6. Asia in Miniature
Signification, Noise, and Cosmopolitan Style
7. Global Disconnect
Abjection and the Aftermath of Modernism
Postscript: December 1998
Appendix: Mineworkers' Letters
Notes
References
Index
