Jane I. Guyer

LaRay Denzer

Adigun A. B. Agbaje

This study examines the operations of the popular economy and social life of southern Nigerian people under the incoherent conditions that followed Nigeria's first currency devaluation in 1986. It describes in detail the institutional and cultural innovations that fostered local economic activity and strengthened social groupings. The book questions standard views of either chaos or stagnation in the African popular economy under autocratic rule and incoherent policy. It shows how over 100 million people continued to make a living and maintain high levels of equanimity and productivity even in the face of chronic turbulence. Despite economic challenges, regrouping, institutional innovation and cultural elaboration did take place, often in ways that reforged the relationship between formal and informal economic practices and among local, regional, and global economies. The book's case studies, taken together, identify distinct patterns and directions of growth at a time when many observers thought that chaos seemed the most likely outcome. This is an important contribution to the literature on the social history of globalization and to interdisciplinary analyses of local social, cultural, and political economic systems.

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