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Daniel E. Agbiboa
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They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Everyday Survival in Urban Nigeria (Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research, and Policy in International Development Studies)

by Daniel E. Agbiboa (Author)
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Accounts of corruption in Africa and the Global South are generally overly simplistic and macro-oriented, and commonly disconnect everyday (petty) corruption from political (grand) corruption. In contrast to this tendency, They Eat Our Sweat offers a fresh and engaging look at the corruption complex in Africa through a micro analysis of its informal transport sector, where collusion between state and nonstate actors is most rife. Focusing on Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital and Africa's largest city, Daniel Agbiboa investigates the workaday world of road transport operators as refracted through the extortion racket and violence of transport unions acting in complicity with the state. Steeped in an embodied knowledge of Lagos and backed by two years of thorough ethnographic fieldwork, including working as an informal bus conductor, Agbiboa provides an emic perspective on precarious labour, popular agency and the daily pursuit of survival under the shadow of the modern world system. Corruption, Agbiboa argues, is not rooted in Nigerian culture but is shaped by the struggle to get by and get ahead on the fast and slow lanes of Lagos. The pursuit of economic survival compels transport operators to participate in the reproduction of the very transgressive system they denounce. They Eat Our Sweat is not just a book about corruption but also about transportation, politics, and governance in urban Africa.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0198861540
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0198861546
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  4. Publication date
    May 2, 2022
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    9.1 x 1 x 6 inches
  7. Print length
    280 pages
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this riveting account, Agbiboa dispels the myth that corruption is a culturally accepted norm in Nigeria...Agbiboa shows that binary understandings of formality/informality, public/private, and legal/illegal derived from Western thought do not adequately capture the way that petty corruption is embedded in the state and is driven by elite corruption." -- Ali Mari Tripp, Shepherd

"The book is very well written and easy to read. Agbiboa frequently lets transport workers speak for themselves by including interview quotations, even in local languages or in pidgin...the book kept my attention throughout." -- Els Keunen, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute

"By emphasizing the importance of considering people's voices in policy making, Professor Agbiboa is advocating for a more inclusive and effective approach to the regulation of the informal transport sector in Africa." -- Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u, Africa Policy Journal

"A governor or minister might see informal transport sector as a nuisance to a modern city. He might bring consultants to hurriedly analyze the problem and come up with a solution. Every person would like to see his city looking like San Francisco, Paris or Dubai. What we tend to forget is that there are thousands of lives that could suffer in our attempt to look modern. Where do we put those people who work as drivers and 'conductors' if we don't have an alternative industry that will absorb them? To understand this, Professor Daniel went to the field. He became a bus 'conductor' for two months working with a driver, starting early in the morning and absorbing the difficulty that comes with such endeavor. He used his research to understand the difficulty of survival within the informal transportation sector." -- Nigerian Tracker

"In focusing on the politics of road transport, on the everyday corruption and the hard living world of transport drivers, Agbiboa's book constitutes the most detailed and accurate account existing on the road transport system in Nigeria so far." -- Laurent Fourchard, Global Policy

"Agbiboa demonstrates that corruption is not rooted in Nigerian culture but, rather, a set of everyday practices aimed to obtain economic survival and counter precarious livelihoods." -- Federico Bellentani, Social Semiotics

"Agbiboa's research explores key underlying mechanisms of corruption in the transportation sector in Lagos, Nigeria. Agbiboa is to be commended for his highly creative analysis and comprehensive methodological approach, drawing on participant observations, interviews, and written records for a rich, multi-dimensional exploration of Nigerian history, culture, and everyday social interactions...The intricate weaving of perspectives is compelling and thought provoking." -- Jacqueline Joslyn, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies

"An ethnographically very rich account of corruption practices in everyday road transportation in Lagos." -- Sebastian Kohl, Economic Sociology: Perspectives and Conversations

"They Eat Our Sweat, as it stands now, has already provided us with a fresh and insightful view of everyday encounters with corruption and its grounded institutions. Agbiboa's in depth study of informal transport politics elevates the innovative ethnographic approach to Lagos in African urban studies. Looking ahead, this study is equally valuable to understanding the ever changing urban dynamics of life in Lagos, with ongoing development of other modes of mobility infrastructure and urbanism. In sum, They Eat Our Sweat paves an intellectual path to understandings of an urban future of African megacities." -- Allen Xiao , Society & Space

"They Eat Our Sweat provides a rich case study in the everyday moral economy of corruption, showing how corruption structures the everyday production of space and urban mobilities and, in so doing, demonstrates the ubiquity and heterogeneity (close to the point of semantic incoherence) of corruption as a system of governance and mode of appropriation." -- Jacob Doherty , Journal of Urban Affairs

"Daniel Agbiboa's book They Eat Our Sweat (2022) is a pathbreaking look at corruption in Nigerian society. Told with a view that combines well-argued theory and an uncompromising sight into the stark realities of urban transport, the book restores corruption from a flippant, inaccurate caricature to a standpoint where all hold some accountability. This is a rare academic book that grabs readers and holds on for the duration -- a real page-turner -- its scathing, fiery prose burns with knowing intensity throughout." -- Public Organization Review

"A key belief that is challenged in Agbiboa's book is that bribery is culturally accepted or forms part of a 'moral economy.' In contrast, the continuous extortion from state and affiliated actors is continuously decried by ordinary citizens as 'eating too much,' yet citizens have no choice to participate in order to survive." -- Journal of Cultural Economy

"They Eat Our Sweat convincingly challenges the argument that corruption is a culturally accepted norm in Nigerian society related to gift-giving, in contrast showing how Nigerians reject corruption but also face the reality of having to play the game." -- Journal of Cultural Economy

"They Eat Our Sweat ably demonstrates the generative capacity of corruption to reproduce its own conditions of survival." -- Allegra Lab: Anthropology for Radical Optimism

"They Eat Our Sweat convincingly challenges the argument that corruption is a culturally accepted norm in Nigerian society related to gift-giving, in contrast showing how Nigerians reject corruption but also face the reality of having to play the game." -- Journal of Cultural Economy

"A key belief that is challenged in Agbiboa's book is that bribery is culturally accepted or forms part of a 'moral economy.' In contrast, the continuous extortion from state and affiliated actors is continuously decried by ordinary citizens as 'eating too much,' yet citizens have no choice to participate in order to survive." -- Allegra Lab: Anthropology for Radical Optimism

"Daniel Agbiboa's book They Eat Our Sweat (2022) is a pathbreaking look at corruption in Nigerian society. Told with a view that combines well-argued theory and an uncompromising sight into the stark realities of urban transport, the book restores corruption from a flippant, inaccurate caricature to a standpoint where all hold some accountability. This is a rare academic book that grabs readers and holds on for the duration - a real page-turner - its scathing, fiery prose burns with knowing intensity throughout." -- Christopher L. Atkinson, Public Organization Review

"The description of the flows and fixities present throughout the transport system show how the state, institutional actors, unions, and people interact, composing displacement practices, as well as executing discursive and non-discursive practices to accept and reject corruption" -- Hernán Camilo Pulido-Martinez, Subjectivity

"[Agbiboa's] lived experience and his comparative research extend our understanding of societies around the world where negotiating corruption is part of everyday life." -- Michelle Nicholasen, Epicenter

"The book offers an intimate look at this shadowy network." -- Michelle Nicholasen, Epicenter Blog: Harvard University

"This is brave, bold, and brilliant research, which provides insights that more conventional strategies would simply not generate" -- Nic Cheeseman, African Studies Review

"They Eat Our Sweat is a gripping analysis of how corruption is sculpted by and perpetuates multifaceted social networks upon which scores of Lagosians are dependent for their livelihoods and how these networks are embedded within the Nigerian state." -- Daniela Schofield, LSE Review of Books

"... open[s] fresh perspectives on the corruption and insurgency debate in Africa." -- Gabriel O. Apata, Theory, Culture & Society

"Agbiboa offers a brilliantly insightful look into the mixing and meshing of transport, labor union and government workers―sometimes collusive, sometimes violent―in a Nigerian megacity known for deep problems and inventive solutions. They Eat Our Sweat shakes up usual understandings of order and chaos, government and public, centrality and marginality, survival and profiteering. Challenging simplistic notions of corruption as a matter of one-way exploitation, moral depravity, or African cultural inevitability, Agbiboa roundly explores the topic from within the fluid and dynamic transport system. The book perceptively and vividly describes the complexity of strategy and mutual adaptation practiced day to day, showing how those who denounce and who depend on practices like bribery, extortion, and nepotism are often the same people. The result is moving in every sense." -- Parker Shipton, , Professor of Anthropology and African Studies, Boston University

"A superb book, full of fresh insights and grounded in enthralling ethnography, They Eat Our Sweat provides a nuanced analysis of Nigeria's notorious corruption. Immersed in the everyday world of road transport workers in Lagos, Agbiboa's stunningly evocative narrative advances a compelling theoretical framework that accounts for the agency―and plight―of ordinary citizens." -- Daniel Jordan Smith, Professor of Anthropology, Brown University, and author of Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria

"They Eat Our Sweat is a skillful and compelling navigation of the contours of everyday urban life as it manifests in the informal transport sector where the actuality of urban mobility challenges the possibilities of good life in Africa's foremost megalopolis. The book captures the underbelly of Lagos in its enthralling, perplexing and vexing intricacies." -- Wale Adebanwi, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania

"Taking over from where Daniel Jordan Smith left off, They Eat our Sweat is an unflinching, richly grounded micro analysis of quotidian corruption in Nigeria. Primarily situated in the riveting economy between the transport union toughs and political heavies in Lagos, Nigeria's ever dynamic megacity, the book vividly portrays the 'work' and 'workings' of corruption against the backdrop of worsening social precarity. Those interested in the strictures of urban living, particularly how unequal negotiations between the state and a host of nonstate actors incentivize violent subalternity, will find Daniel Agbiboa's vivid interlacing of the personal with varied strands of conceptualization utterly compelling." -- Ebenezer Obadare, Professor of Sociology, University of Kansas, and author of Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria

"A significant contribution to the understanding of the connection between layers of power, elite politics, and their interrelatedness to everyday survival strategies in an urban space." -- Omolade Adunbi, Political and Legal Anthropology Review

"This book provides an in-depth understanding of key parts of the informal transit system in Lagos, as well as new insight into the everyday corruption that exists in many parts of the world." -- Dolores Koenig, Urbanites: Journal of Urban Ethnography

"Agbiboa gives us a rich and nuanced understanding of the complex dynamics of corruption and the ways it is experienced, precarious labour and informality, and the everyday struggles for survival in Lagos." -- Vanessa van den Boogaard, Sociology

"This work's importance lies in the way it demonstrates how people learn to navigate this system to survive." -- Choice

"Through its disruption of Western definitions of corruption as applied to Africa, and its attention to everyday stories of paratransit workers entangled in the dance for survival in a precarious social and economic environment, They Eat Our Sweat provides an important contribution to the appreciation of mobility, labor, and life in the African city." -- Bradley Rink, Department of Geography, Environmental Studies & Tourism, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa, The AAG Review of Books

"Agbiboa's work in They Eat Our Sweat unpacks a carefully considered understanding of corruption that demonstrates the degree to which it has been entrenched in social and economic life in Nigeria. His analysis allows the reader to get beyond an oversimplified interpretation of corruption as illegality through an understanding of the interrelationships between the state, society, and economy in Nigeria." -- Bradley Rink, Department of Geography, Environmental Studies & Tourism, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa, The AAG Review of Books

"In attempting to provide a grounded, place-based understanding of corruption, Agbiboa helpfully moves us past old and unnecessarily limiting assumptions about corruption as a function of failed states to instead understand the complex dynamics of daily life. This is a welcome revisiting of old debates with a fresh new perspective informed by a broad literature that is heavily anchored in anthropology, but which also includes history, political science, economics, and other allied fields." -- Jennifer Hart, History Department, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg (VA), United States

"The book's solid empirical base makes it an important study of transport working conditions in the country. Agbiboa usefully questions the distinction - recently established by critical scholars - between "capitalist owners" (of minibuses) and "proletarian workers" (who have only their labour to sell) in Africa's cities. In Lagos, he suggests, the workers have the potential to earn more money than the owners." -- Laurent Fourchard, Research Professor at the National Foundation for Political Science (CERI), The Conversations

"The book's categorization of the politicization of the union is enlightening, as it depicts youth as both agents and victims of manipulation." -- Tope Shola Akinyetun, The Young

"The work is very sensitive to the forms of domination exercised in the transport sector, as opposed to literature that values informality. It exposes the daily interactions between drivers, police officers and members of the dominant union in Lagos, the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW). Corruption is the central object around which much of the book revolves, which [Agbiboa] is careful not to essentialize." -- Politique Africaine

"The book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students in the fields of urban anthropology, transportation planning, and development studies." -- Ding Fei, The Journal of Development Studies

"Readable and accessible, They Eat Our Sweat would be a welcome addition to undergraduate classes in African studies, anthropology, geography, international studies, political science, and urban studies, among others." -- Sarah Muir, Transforming Anthropology Vol. 31

"The book offers valuable evidence in thinking about corruption complexes in cities of the Global South more broadly, but also in terms of specific empirical contexts. The book lays out a promising line of inquiry for studies engaging with the topic of corruption making it an essential read for anyone broadly engaged in the subject across the social sciences." -- Priyanjali Mitra, Doing Sociology

"This is a book with significant theoretical underpinnings and is rooted in a unique research base. Agbiboa spent months working in the informal bus sector. This highly participatory form of ethnography―he was certainly no mere observer-allows him to generate a visceral sense of how, where, and, ultimately, why informality and "corruption" characterize the operations of this sector. These experiences enable him to generate a clear and, at the same time, nuanced sense of how corrupt acts are the contingent consequences of individuals responding to multiple layers of precarious existence in the city." -- Journal of Law and Political Economy 728

"Overall, Agbiboa does a splendid job in rebuking the misguided, essentialist and frankly racist idea of an 'African' culture of corruption without romanticizing the complex patronage politics that profoundly shape the everyday urban experience of Lagosians. Well-researched, rich in content and accessibly written, They Eat Our Sweat is a timely intervention for anyone interested in new ways of understanding the critical intersections between everyday urban practice, transport infrastructures and the African state." -- Laura Nkula-Wenz, International Journal Of Urban And Regional Studies

"[T]his book is poetic and readable, and it will resonate with anyone who has navigated the vast city it describes." -- Samuel Fury Childs Daly, Current Anthropology

About the Author

Daniel E. Agbiboa, Harvard University

Daniel E. Agbiboa is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He earned a PhD in International Development from the University of Oxford and an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the relationships between state and nonstate actors in contemporary Africa. He is the recipient of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar Award, and is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His books include Transport, Transgression and Politics in African Cities: The Rhythm of Chaos (Routledge, 2018), and People, Predicaments and Potentials in Africa (Langaa RPCIG, 2021). He has authored articles in leading journals such as Public Culture, Current History, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, African Studies Review, African Affairs, and Journal of Modern African Studies.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press (May 2, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198861540
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198861546
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.1 x 1 x 6 inches

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