Senior Research Seminar with Dr Michael Degani (University of Cambridge)

Dr Michael Degani (University of Cambridge)Parasites, Invention, and Grace: Taking Turns in a Streetcorner Bureaucracy

This talk analyzes styles of work and conflict amongst a group of “contractors” that congregate outside—and intercept the customers of—an electrical utility office in urban Tanzania. Tempering depictions of African cities as rhizomatic and crisis-ridden, it argues that their long-running streetcorner bureau has endured by striking an artful balance with its institutional host. This is a daily act of cultural invention, whereby existing conventions (here entrepreneurial hustle and bureaucratic order, the street and the office) act as metaphorical extensions of one another. When performed poorly, such inventive turns become mere parodies of the conventions they aim to transfigure. Performed well, they figure a certain kind of grace.