Identity economics: social networks and the informal economy in Nigeria, by Kate Meagher, Oxford, James Currey, 2010, 224 pp., £16.99, ISBN 9781847010162
This book is an ethnographic study of social networks within the informal economy in southeastern Nigeria. The content manifests the expertise of the author in the areas of the informal economy and non-state governance in Africa. A general picture that emerges is the importance of understanding both the form and function of social networks if we are to appreciate how relevant social networks can be in different spatial and historical frames. At every point relevant questions are asked and thought-provoking answers are provided. What I find most interesting is how Meagher is able to link various themes of development interest: issues of ethnicity, politics of exclusion, accelerated economic liberalisation, institutional and infrastructural decay, and political opportunism that have been associated with politics and development in Nigeria. She also raises the pertinent question of the vulnerability of the informal economy to policy failure and state neglect.
The book is made up of nine chapters. Chapter 1 looks into ‘Social networks and economic ungovernance in Africa’, with particular reference to southeastern Nigeria. Chapter 2 reviews the literature on informal economic networks and questions of governance. Chapter 3 takes a historical perspective to examine economic networks among the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria from pre-colonial through colonial to the early years of Independence. Chapter 4 addresses the experiences of informal-economy workers in the era of economic restructuring. The focus here is on the challenges of economic restructuring, and the impacts on production networks in the shoe and garment clusters. The book pays particular attention to supply and marketing networks within the informal economy and subcontracting networks with the formal economy. Chapter 5 turns to the restructuring of informal enterprise networks characterised by the weakening of various social ‘ties’, including gender and personal ties. Chapter 6 examines the place of popular associations in filling gaps arising from the weakening of ties based on business interests/networks. Chapter 7 explores how the quest for accumulation and survival has been linked to differentiation, exclusion and network fragmentation. Chapter 8 examines the place of producer associations in the garment and shoe clusters, providing in each case a brief account of their history, organisation and functions. This is followed by a section on the development and disbanding of the Bakassi Boys Vigilante Group. The Bakassi Boys developed as a grassroots response to the breakdown of security and managed to bring a semblance of security, but later suffered state capture when the original cause was abandoned due to political manipulation and political imperatives at the state and federal levels. This brief account provides a context for understanding the connection between youth involvement in violent conflict and its impact on the informal economy and Nigeria's economic and political development. The last chapter turns to questions of development, focusing centrally on social networks in the informal economy and general concerns about economic development in terms of linkages with the formal economy, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the state.
One can only marvel at how this book adds to recent attempts to break from the essentialised constructions of the informal economy. The book adds new insights regarding the difficulties of organising the informal economy in general, and in relation to the positioning of the informal economy in processes of global economic structuring since the 1980s. The historical account challenges the thinking which understands the existence of networks in the informal economy as a new phenomenon, often linked in mainstream literature to the liberalisation of economies, and the consequent reduction in trade-union membership due to retrenchments in the 1980s and 1990s.
The strongest aspect of the book is its clear structure. The book has a very attractive title; its organisation into chapters, sections and subsections is logical; and the language is crystalline. The book displays a good balance between presentation of empirical detail and theoretical abstractions. The cover photo depicting shoemakers in front of their stalls is well chosen. The lucid structure makes for pleasant reading. The book is a useful reference for graduate students, but also a source book for the multidisciplinary range of scholars interested in the implications of economic informalisation for development and democratisation.
The breadth and length of the book reflects intensive fieldwork accomplished between 2001 and 2007 during which the author applied a triangulation of methods including in-depth interviews, survey methods, life histories, social mapping and discussion. Drawing on these methods the book contributes towards a better understanding of the changing character of the informal economy in Africa.
I agree with the author's analysis of informality as a response to vulnerability as it is also about being able to identify alternative forms of order. However the question is, vulnerability from whose perspective? Or, what is the reference point here? If the people involved in the informal economy claim that what they do represents creative enterprise, do scholars have to interpret that as vulnerability? Here is room for re-examination of the subjective experiences of the actors. Here also is the need to appreciate that the reality of scholars may be different from that of the actors.
The final chapter presents a number of factual conclusions and recommendations that should prove very valuable to policy makers at both state and federal level in Nigeria. The main recommendations relate to the need for synergy between informal enterprise and the state, as the author puts it, rather than continuing to pretend that social networks and cultural values should be able to fill the widening gaps in state provision (p. 177). Second is the need to strengthen the capacity of informal operators and their associations to represent informal economic interests from below. I find the second recommendation rather ideological given the problems of representation where those entrusted with leadership positions seek first to promote personal interests rather than group interests. Working with NGOs and trade unions has also proved futile given problems of leadership. At the end of the day power struggles in the trade-union movement, for example, exacerbate the already precarious situation in the social networks in the informal economy.