Of the several forces reshaping West African rural societies and economies in the post-colonial period, one of the most pervasive is the rapid growth of urban demand. This book studies a Yoruba community in the supply hinterland of Ibadan over twenty years. It tells the social and agricultural history of its various producers, from the Nigerian civil war, via the oil boom and bust, to structural adjustment. It argues that principles of occupational organisation inherited from the past are now being applied to the creation of a competitive and responsive regional market that promises to be one of the most important social forms in West Africa's future.

The main body of the book is based on anthropological field research. It describes the contours of growth from 1968-88 through narratives of change for all the major participants. The final section draws together all the threads and discusses the interplay amongst the technical repertoire for production in a savanna ecology, forces emanating from the political economy of the urban hinterland, and the tenets of Yoruba occupational culture.

The main body of the book is based on anthropological field research. It describes the contours of growth from 1968-88 through narratives of change for all the major participants. The final section draws together all the threads and discusses the interplay amongst the technical repertoire for production in a savanna ecology, forces emanating from the political economy of the urban hinterland, and the tenets of Yoruba occupational culture.

In The Economy of Hope, hope becomes not only a method of knowledge but also an essential framework for the sociocultural analysis of economic phenomena.

"What does it mean to say that rural areas of Africa are poor? Many people insist that in rural African countries areas poverty is prevalent. This is either because the smallholder agricultural practices are unproductive or it is because economic policies have not protected and promoted African farming. But whether this deprivation is the fault of the peasant, or the government, both sides agree on the facts of rural poverty. However in both cases rural poverty is described using measures which make it hard, if not impossible, to capture new forms of wealth that rural people may be accruing. These new forms of wealth, which largely comprise productive assets, are especially important because they feature so prominently in rural people's own definitions of wealth. Using an unprecedented collection of longitudinal surveys, in which experienced researchers have revisited villages which they have known for decades, we track surprising increases in assets in diverse locations in Tanzania. These findings the result is a compilation which is fascinating in itself and important far understanding of rural economies development data and agricultural policy"--

Drawing on rich ethnographic data as well as archaeological evidence, The Boundaries of Ancient Trade challenges long-standing conceptions of highly centralized sociopolitical and economic organization and trade along the Afar salt trail—one of the last economically significant caravan-based trade routes in the world. For thousands of years, farmers in the Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea have run caravans of nearly 250,000 people and pack animals annually along an eighty-mile route through both cold, high-altitude farmlands and some of the hottest volcanic desert terrain on earth. In her fieldwork, archaeologist Helina Solomon Woldekiros followed the route with her own donkey and camel caravan, observing and interviewing over 150 Arho (caravaners), salt miners, salt cutters, warehouse owners, brokers, shop owners, and salt village residents to model the political economy of the ancient Aksumite state. The first integrated ethnoarchaeological and archaeological research on this legendary route, this volume provides evidence that informal economies and local participation have played a critical role in regional trade and, ultimately, in maintaining the considerable power of the Aksumite state. Woldekiros also contributes new insights into the logistics of pack animal–based trade and variability in the central and regional organization of global ancient trade. Using a culturally informed framework for understanding the organization of the ancient salt route and its role in linking the Aksumite state to rural highland agricultural and lowland mobile pastoralist populations, The Boundaries of Ancient Trade makes a key contribution to theoretical discussions of hierarchy and more diffuse power structures in ancient states. This work generates new interest in the region as an area of global relevance in archaeological and anthropological debates on landscape, social interaction, and practice theories.