Browsing by Author "Nyakuwa, Robert"
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- ItemInformality and governmentality: An ethnography of conversion entrepreneurship in Harare(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03) Nyakuwa, Robert; Van der Waal, Cornelis; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Sociology & Social Anthropology.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: From its empirical and theoretical genealogy, informality has been proximate to poverty and illegality, hence it is associated with descriptions such as lumpenproletariat, (Neuwirth, 2011) ‘survivalist’, or ‘necessity’ (Berner et al., 2012) economy. By using largely a priori coded notions deployed on the poorer sections of the (mostly) urban population, most researchers miss emergent practices and some of the dynamism in other sections of the urban population where formality and informality are intentional. By means of an experimental visual ethnography using smart phones in Harare - Zimbabwe, this study documents informal entrepreneurship. It develops the concept of conversion entrepreneurship to illustrate agency by informal entrepreneurs in a dead economy through structuring innovative entrepreneurial activities in both formal and informal economic spheres. This concept reclaims and extends the economic anthropological notions drawn from Paul Bohannan (1955) and Fredrick Barth (1967) on spheres of exchange. It illustrates how ‘conversions’ are economic transactions by entrepreneurs targeted at areas of institutional incongruence. It affirms profit as a strong motivation for informal entrepreneurs to be innovative. The study observes that innovation is facilitated through processes of social embeddedness, which include forming entrepreneurial groups, deploying mobile phone payment systems and social networking applications as well as participating in church ‘cell’ groups. Churches can serve as business incubators, the study argues. Deploying a structuration epistemology, the study connects conversion entrepreneurs to governmentalities - technologies of governance. It shows how the indigenization governmentality is a morally coloured instrument of social exclusion. By deploying James Scott's (1985) ‘Weapons of the Weak’, the study shows how enterprises have become frontiers for political resistance against the kleptocratic Zimbabwean state. Through observing the embeddedness of conversion entrepreneurs within #ThisFlag social media mediated rebellion against the state in 2016, the study proves that structures can be altered out of the exercise of power by agents.