A share in the sands

Trips, pits and potholes in Accra, Ghana

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2103804
AutoresKatherine Dawson (University College London, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen93
Número1
Páginas40-59
Fecha de publicación2023-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972023000116
OpenAlexW4361861780
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas18

This article deploys sand as a potential way of engaging with contemporary livelihoods in the Ghanaian city of Accra - one of many metropolitan nodes in an urbanizing region of West Africa. Both as a very real material at the heart of concrete urbanization and as metaphorically indicative of the shifting landscapes of opportunity and income on which lives and livelihoods are marked out, sand is offered as a way of seeing and writing about the city. The article brings these two facets of urban sand together in more concrete ways, considering how the material production of the city becomes the uneven, uncertain ground of urban life-making. Drawing from fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Accra, the article engages with the movements of sand across the city, as it travels from extraction zones (or pits) to lorries and then to places of consumption. By honing in on the material behaviours and temporal junctures of sand as it shifts its shape, form and directions, the article draws out the ways in which sand emerges as a platform for exchange, negotiation and ultimately income for different people across the city region. In turn, it offers a share in the sands as a tentative holding space for the kinds of claims made on and through sand, positioning them as indicative of a dweller-led, emergent politics that claims a share of an income, livelihood and urban future

Agriculture · Archaeology · Consumption (sociology · Economic growth · Economics · Ethnography · Geography · Livelihood · Metropolitan area · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · TRIPS architecture · Urbanization · African history and culture studies · Engineering · Law · Urban and Rural Development Challenges