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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Fishing in Troubled Waters: Disquettes and Thiofs in Dakar |
Author: | Nyamnjoh, Francis B. |
Year: | 2005 |
Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
Volume: | 75 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 295-324 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Senegal |
Subjects: | urban life gender relations sexuality terminology Urbanization and Migration Economics and Trade Health and Nutrition urbanization economics |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3556750 |
Abstract: | This article traces metaphors of consumerism, commoditized sex and sexified commodities that proliferate throughout urban Africa, signalling the intensified globalization of images of desire and opportunity, on the one hand, and chronic poverty and destitution, on the other. Focusing on sexual economies in Dakar, Senegal, as a case in point, the article analyses how, in situations of increasing scarcity and transurban articulations, language, sex possession, loss, self-construction and self-corruption mutually shape each other. It focuses on the relationship between 'disquettes' (trendy girls) and 'thiofs' (trendy young men, also the name of a prized fish), representing textures and intricacies that arise as the interdependencies among status, pleasure, appropriation, seduction and livelihood are worked out. It examines how these operations themselves elaborate a landscape of possibilities always on the verge of overflowing established sense and sentiments, yet somehow reined in, held, albeit in a highly tenuous relationship, to what is known and valued. It shows how the city makes itself urban, despite the nearly impossible economic and political conditions it faces, through a capacity to narrate these tales of fishing (as well as fishy stories). The author stresses the need for further research on the lethal cocktail of the globalization of consumerism and poverty in marginal sites of accumulation in Africa. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract] |