Amiel Bize
Biographic Data
| ID | 242431 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amiel Bize |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amiel |
| FAMILY NAME | Bize |
| SIGNATURE | BIZE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7213-9712 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Who gets the remainder? The ethics and politics of gleaning
We offer a new way of thinking about remainder economies in this special issue on ‘gleaning’ (the practice of claiming leftovers). We trace how people in many different places and times justify taking leftovers by claiming to seek some higher social end, over and above their own private interest. Gleaners take useful scraps not just by right but also by obligation: they assert both an entitlement to things that are too accidental, insignificant, …
Scrap value: Finders and keepers in Kenya’s scrap metal recovery chain
Scrap metal collecting in Nairobi spans the city both spatially and in terms of social class, linking precarious scrap pickers to some of the city's wealthiest elite. Processes of sorting and amassing scrap metal allow it to pass stepwise along a "recovery chain” from small, to medium, to large dealers. Through this work, scrap metal shifts from small, heterogenous (scrappy) collections of remainders in the initial stages of collection to large, …
The Politics of Smallness
How does a vernacular unit, the “plot,” become a standard unit of land advertisement and sale? The shift away from agricultural land use often takes the form of subdivision, as parcels are broken down into smaller pieces. This essay asks about the meaningful and material work that goes into decomposing agricultural land and recomposing real estate “plots” in rural western Kenya. It looks carefully at the role of units, measurement, and size, with…
Wrecking: The moral economies of cargo salvage on the Northern Corridor
Along East Africa's most trafficked commodity corridor, road accidents sometimes make cargo available for salvaging. This paper draws on genealogies of shipwreck salvage – 'wrecking' – to explore how roadside salvagers distinguish their activities from theft and make them legitimate. In contrast with classic theories of property which ask how unowned things become property, I ask the opposite: how do owned things become unowned – available to cla…
Planning by Exception: The Regulation of Nairobi’s Margins
Nairobi’s planning regime is characterized by two conditions of exception: on the one hand, exceptions from regulation, that is, planning offices granting exceptions from planning rules and, on the other hand, regulatory regimes that are enforced by low-level administrations outside the planning office but that significantly impact Nairobi’s urban space—we call this exceptional regulation. We argue that it is these two intertwined conditions of e…
The Right to the Remainder: Gleaning in the Fuel Economies of East Africa's Northern Corridor
This article argues for the importance of the remainder as a key concept in economic transactions at the edges of liberalized market economies. It tracks the East African roadside trade in siphoned fuel, where lorry drivers sell "leftover" fuel to dealers who then resell it to rural hinterlands. Rather than seeing this exchange as illicit, drivers and dealers viewed themselves as legitimately trading residual bits of a commodity. They constructed…
The Right to the Remainder: Gleaning in the Fuel Economies of East Africa's Northern Corridor
This article argues for the importance of the remainder as a key concept in economic transactions at the edges of liberalized market economies. It tracks the East African roadside trade in siphoned fuel, where lorry drivers sell "leftover" fuel to dealers who then resell it to rural hinterlands. Rather than seeing this exchange as illicit, drivers and dealers viewed themselves as legitimately trading residual bits of a commodity. They constructed…
The Politics of Smallness
How does a vernacular unit, the “plot,” become a standard unit of land advertisement and sale? The shift away from agricultural land use often takes the form of subdivision, as parcels are broken down into smaller pieces. This essay asks about the meaningful and material work that goes into decomposing agricultural land and recomposing real estate “plots” in rural western Kenya. It looks carefully at the role of units, measurement, and size, with…
Planning by Exception: The Regulation of Nairobi’s Margins
Nairobi’s planning regime is characterized by two conditions of exception: on the one hand, exceptions from regulation, that is, planning offices granting exceptions from planning rules and, on the other hand, regulatory regimes that are enforced by low-level administrations outside the planning office but that significantly impact Nairobi’s urban space—we call this exceptional regulation. We argue that it is these two intertwined conditions of e…
The Right to the Remainder: Gleaning in the Fuel Economies of East Africa's Northern Corridor
This article argues for the importance of the remainder as a key concept in economic transactions at the edges of liberalized market economies. It tracks the East African roadside trade in siphoned fuel, where lorry drivers sell "leftover" fuel to dealers who then resell it to rural hinterlands. Rather than seeing this exchange as illicit, drivers and dealers viewed themselves as legitimately trading residual bits of a commodity. They constructed…
Planning by Exception: The Regulation of Nairobi’s Margins
Nairobi’s planning regime is characterized by two conditions of exception: on the one hand, exceptions from regulation, that is, planning offices granting exceptions from planning rules and, on the other hand, regulatory regimes that are enforced by low-level administrations outside the planning office but that significantly impact Nairobi’s urban space—we call this exceptional regulation. We argue that it is these two intertwined conditions of e…
Wrecking: The moral economies of cargo salvage on the Northern Corridor
Along East Africa's most trafficked commodity corridor, road accidents sometimes make cargo available for salvaging. This paper draws on genealogies of shipwreck salvage – 'wrecking' – to explore how roadside salvagers distinguish their activities from theft and make them legitimate. In contrast with classic theories of property which ask how unowned things become property, I ask the opposite: how do owned things become unowned – available to cla…
The Politics of Smallness
How does a vernacular unit, the “plot,” become a standard unit of land advertisement and sale? The shift away from agricultural land use often takes the form of subdivision, as parcels are broken down into smaller pieces. This essay asks about the meaningful and material work that goes into decomposing agricultural land and recomposing real estate “plots” in rural western Kenya. It looks carefully at the role of units, measurement, and size, with…
Who gets the remainder? The ethics and politics of gleaning
We offer a new way of thinking about remainder economies in this special issue on ‘gleaning’ (the practice of claiming leftovers). We trace how people in many different places and times justify taking leftovers by claiming to seek some higher social end, over and above their own private interest. Gleaners take useful scraps not just by right but also by obligation: they assert both an entitlement to things that are too accidental, insignificant, …
Scrap value: Finders and keepers in Kenya’s scrap metal recovery chain
Scrap metal collecting in Nairobi spans the city both spatially and in terms of social class, linking precarious scrap pickers to some of the city's wealthiest elite. Processes of sorting and amassing scrap metal allow it to pass stepwise along a "recovery chain” from small, to medium, to large dealers. Through this work, scrap metal shifts from small, heterogenous (scrappy) collections of remainders in the initial stages of collection to large, …
Economics (3 works) · Politics (3 works) · Business (2 works) · Economy (2 works) · Law (2 works) · Law (2 works) · Political science (2 works) · Scrap (2 works) · African history and culture studies (1 works) · African studies and sociopolitical issues (1 works)