Moral Economies of Distribution and Redistribution in Africa The Right and Wrong of Who Gets (and Gives) What and Why

Introduction: Moral economies of distribution and redistribution in Africa: the right and wrong of who gets (and gives) what and why

Tijo Salverda, Cristiano Lanzano and Jörg Wiegratz

1. Keeping culture clean: ‘nested redistribution’ as a path to moral redemption in Kampala (Uganda)

Anna Baral

2. Wrecking: the moral economies of cargo salvage on the Northern Corridor
Amiel Bize

3. Are street children juvenile migrants? Discoveries from their earning, spending and saving practices (Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso)

Muriel Champy

4. The second-hand clothing trade and moral economic contestations over (re)distribution in Tanzania

Gerda Kuiper

5. Navigating conflicting moral temporalities: gradual growth, state sovereignty and small-scale trade in urban Ghana

Ulrik Jennische

6. Conspicuous redistribution: money, morality, and masculinity in Nigeria

Daniel Jordan Smith

7. Redistributive matronage: a moral economy of female traders and the ruling elite in Equatorial Guinea

Alba Valenciano-Mañé          

8. ‘They are taking everything away from us’: autochthonous claims and the moral contestations over Chiadzwa diamonds, eastern Zimbabwe

Patience Chadambuka, Felix Tombindo and Tawanda Ray Bvirindi

9. The economic rationality in the culture of Gamo wealth redistribution, Southern Ethiopia

Desalegn Amsalu

10. ‘A man’s gift will make room for him’: sources of wealth and legitimacy in charismatic Christianity in Ghana

Karen Lauterbach

Biography

Tijo Salverda is an economic anthropologist, who has held several research positions and (temporary and guest) professorships at institutions including the University of Vienna, the University of Pretoria, and the University of Cologne. Tijo has published widely on elites, inequality, moral economy, and corporations and their critics – in Mauritius, Zambia, South Africa, and various European countries. He is also involved in applied- anthropological projects, with a particular focus on the just transition and the distribution of the costs and benefits of climate change.

Cristiano Lanzano is a social anthropologist, currently affiliated with KULeuven (Belgium) and IFSRA (Burkina Faso). He has worked for more than fifteen years as a researcher and lecturer for different universities and institutes across Europe, such as the universities of Torino (Italy) and Uppsala (Sweden), and the Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden). He has conducted research in several West African countries, investigating on topics such as urban culture and youth, informal economies, labour mobilities, natural resources management, and the mineral sector.

Jörg Wiegratz is Associate Professor of Global Political Economy and Development at the University of Leeds, School of Politics and International Studies. He is also Senior Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg. He specialises in neoliberalism, fraud and anti- fraud measures, commercialisation and economic pressure and related aspects of moral and political economy, with a focus on Uganda and Kenya. He is co- editor of Neoliberalism and the Moral Economy of Fraud (2016, with David Whyte).

This volume offers a timely and theoretically grounded intervention into longstanding debates about the moral underpinnings of capitalism in Africa. Drawing on richly detailed case studies from across the continent, the contributors examine how practices of distribution and redistribution are morally evaluated, justified, and contested at multiple scales, from kinship networks and street markets to elite politics and religious institutions. The volume will be of particular interest to readers seeking a nuanced understanding of how moral grammars shape everyday forms of (re)distribution and economic life in contemporary Africa.

Professor Catherine Dolan, Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS, UK