Hostname: page-component-5447f9dfdb-ltchl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-28T20:27:18.009Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Africa Has Never Been “Traditional”: So Can We Make a General Case? A Response to the Articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

Jane I. Guyer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Marginal Gains (2204) has been described as a surprising and bold book. Since the articles in this collection, which take one or other of its arguments as points of departure, share certain similar qualities, they can be treated as a collective effort initiating new debate with non-African economic research and thinking. This article reviews the argument of the book, highlights the concept and phenomenon of ordinal ranking in both the book and the articles, and then uses the findings to begin an appreciative critique of the ideas of Michel Callon. Although Callon's approach intersects with that of Marginal Gains in many ways, the scalar ranking of people, and the use of rank to exclude and divert, finds more prominence in the book's approach, which also has more relevance for Europe than economists seem to have acknowledged so far. The article ends with a new instance of ordinal ranking, from Cameroon.

Information

Type
Special Issue
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , September 2007 , pp. 183 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adebayo, Akanmu G. 2007. “Currency Devaluation and Rank: The Yoruba and Akan Experiences” African Studies Review 50 (2): 87–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, Karin. 2007. “When People Cross Thresholds.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 111–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Sara. 2007. “ Marginal Gains, Market Values and History.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 57–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callon, Michel. 2005. “Why Virtualism Paves the Way to Political Impotence.” Economic Sociology. European Electronic Newsletter 6 (3): 3–20.Google Scholar
Callon, Michel.. n.d. “Economy of Qualities, Researchers in the Wild and the Rise of Technical.”Google Scholar
Callon, Michel, Veadel, Cecile, and Rabeharisoa, Vololona. 2002. “The Economy of Qualities.” Economy and Society 31 (2): 194–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coussy, Jean. 2005. “Autour d'un Livre: Marginal Gains.” Politique Africaine 99: 157–60.Google Scholar
Davidson, Basil. 1992. The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation State. New York: Crown.Google Scholar
Eglash, Ron. 2000. African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2007. “Formalities of Poverty: Thinking about Social Assistance in Neoliberal South Africa.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 71–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschiere, Peter. 2007. “Regional Shifts: Marginal Gains and Ethnic Stereotypes.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 43–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschiere, Peter, Goheen, Mitzi, and Piot, Charles. 2007. “Introduction: Marginal Gains Revisited.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 43–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1994. “Living in a Post-Traditional Society.” In Beck, Ulrich, Giddens, Anthony, and Lash, Scott, eds., Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, 56–109. Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane I. 1996. “Traditions of Invention in Equatorial Africa.” African Studies Review 39 (3): 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Jane I.. 2004. Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hart, Keith. 2000. The Memory Bank. Money in an Unequal World. London: Profile Books Google Scholar
Haugerud, Angelique. 2005. Book Review: Marginal Gains. American Ethnologist 32 (4).Google Scholar
Hibou, Beatrice, ed. 2004. Privatizing the State. New York: Columbia Universtiry Press.Google Scholar
Kriger, Colleen E. 1999. Pride of Men: Ironworking in Nineteenth Century West-Central Africa. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 2005. Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 2007. “Incalculable Payments: Money, Scale and the South African Offshore Grey Money Amnesty.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 125–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney. 1998. “The Localization of Anthropological Practice: From Area Studies to Transnationalism.” Critique of Anthropology 18 (2): 117–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piot, Charles. 2007. “Border Practices: Playing the US Diversity Lottery”Google Scholar
Ralph, Michael. 2005. “Review of Margin Gains.” Africa Development 30 (1 & 2): 251–53.Google Scholar
Rivallain, Josette. 1987. “Étude comparée des phénomènes prémonétaire en protohistoire Européenne et en ethnoarchéologie Africaine. Thèse d'Etat Sorbonne, Paris.Google Scholar
Roitman, Janet. 2007. “The Efficacy of the Economy.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 155–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Servet, Jean-Michel. 2005. “Autour d'un livre: Marginal Gains .” Politique Africaine 99: 155–57.Google Scholar
Tapscott, Don, and Williams, Anthony D.. 2006. “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.” Portfolio.Google Scholar
Udry, Christopher, and Woo, Hyungi. 2007. “Households and the Social Organization of Consumption in Southern Ghana.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 139–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verran, Helen. 2007. “The Telling Challenge of Africa's Economies.” African Studies Review 50 (2): 163–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar