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Author Agbiboa, Daniel E. (Daniel Egiegba), 1985- author.

Title They eat our sweat : transport labor, corruption, and everyday survival in urban Nigeria / Daniel E. Agbiboa
Published Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022]
©2022

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Description 1 online resource : illustrations
Series Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research, and Policy in International Development Studies
Critical frontiers of theory, research, and policy in international development studies.
Summary They Eat Our Sweat examines the corruption complex in Africa in the context of transportion. Focusing on Lagos, Nigeria, Agbiboa shows that corruption is driven by the imperatives of urban economic competition
Accounts of corruption in Africa and the Global South are generally overly simplistic and macro-oriented, and commonly disconnect everyday (petty) corruption from political (grand) corruption. In contrast to this tendency, They Eat Our Sweat offers a fresh and engaging look at the corruption complex in Africa through a micro analysis of its informal transport sector, where collusion between state and nonstate actors is most rife. Focusing on Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital and Africa's largest city, Daniel Agbiboa investigates the workaday world of road transport operators as refracted through the extortion racket and violence of transport unions acting in complicity with the state. Steeped in an embodied knowledge of Lagos and backed by two years of thorough ethnographic fieldwork, including working as an informal bus conductor, Agbiboa provides an emic perspective on precarious labour, popular agency and the daily pursuit of survival under the shadow of the modern world system. Corruption, Agbiboa argues, is not rooted in Nigerian culture but is shaped by the struggle to get by and get ahead on the fast and slow lanes of Lagos. The pursuit of economic survival compels transport operators to participate in the reproduction of the very transgressive system they denounce. They Eat Our Sweat is not just a book about corruption but also about transportation, politics, and governance in urban Africa
Notes Description based on online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed January 26, 2023)
Subject Urban transportation -- Corrupt practices -- Nigeria
Urban economics -- Corrupt practices -- Nigeria
Informal sector (Economics) -- Nigeria
Urban transportation -- Corrupt practices -- Nigeria -- Lagos
Informal sector (Economics) -- Nigeria -- Lagos
Economic history
Informal sector (Economics)
SUBJECT Nigeria -- Economic conditions. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85091858
Subject Nigeria
Nigeria -- Lagos
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780192605962
0192605968
9780192605955
019260595X
9780191893544
0191893544