Work, development, and refusal in urban Ethiopia

Bibliographic Data

ID2261553
AuthorsMarco Di Nunzio (0000-0002-5148-7571, Department of African Studies and Anthropology University of Birmingham, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume49
Issue3
Pages401-412
Publication date2022-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/amet.13091
OpenAlexW4286210594
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited47

Marxist autonomists and postwork theorists argue that work ought to be refused. Refusing work, they say, is the first step toward breaking the moral nexus between work, entitlement, and citizenship that constrains people from imagining progressive political projects. In this theorization, the refusal of work is a strategy for revolution. But ethnographic research shows us that acts of refusal can also take place outside the conjunctures of revolutionary change. They can be ordinary, individual, and often invisible. In urban Ethiopia, acts of refusal occurred during an economic boom, when work seemed as if it might have delivered on its promise of collective and individual empowerment. In these circumstances, refusal was less about the possibilities of a revolution and more about the terms of poor people's adverse incorporation through work. Acts of refusal consisted of workers' individual and ordinary attempts to recapture some ownership over their lives in a moment when work both integrated and marginalized workers. [work,refusal,development,inclusion,Ethiopia

Citizenship · Economics · Empowerment · Entitlement (fair division · Ethnography · Inclusion (mineral · Marxist philosophy · Nexus (standard · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Work (physics · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Gender Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law