The Act of Living: Street Life, Marginality, and Development in Urban Ethiopia

Product Description

The Act of Living explores the relation between development and marginality in Ethiopia, one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. Replete with richly depicted characters and multi-layered narratives on history, everyday life and visions of the future, Marco Di Nunzio’s ethnography of hustling and street life is an investigation of what is to live, hope and act in the face of the failing promises of development and change. Di Nunzio follows the life trajectories of two men, “Haile” and “Ibrahim,” as they grow up in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, enter street life to get by, and turn to the city’s expanding economies of work and entrepreneurship to search for a better life. Apparently favourable circumstances of development have not helped them achieve social improvement. As their condition of marginality endures, the two men embark in restless attempts to transform living into a site for hope and possibility.
By narrating Haile and Ibrahim’s lives, The Act of Living explores how and why development continues to fail the poor, how marginality is understood and acted upon in a time of promise, and why poor people’s claims for open-endedness can lead to better and more just alternative futures. Tying together anthropology, African studies, political science, and urban studies, Di Nunzio takes readers on a bold exploration of the meaning of existence, hope, marginality, and street life.

Review

“[A]s a people-focused analysis of certain hardscrabble lives in Addis Ababa, The Act of Living is an interesting work of urban anthropology.” ―
Environment and Urbanization

Review

“Marco Di Nunzio has written an outstanding and inspiring piece of scholarship and is on his way to becoming a leading voice in Ethiopian studies. Di Nunzio is to be congratulated on this anthropology of street life that adds rich stories to ethnographic narrative.” — Tobias Hagmann, University of Roskilde, and editor of
Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa

About the Author

Marco Di Nunzio is Lecturer in the Anthropology of Africa at the University of Birmingham.