UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines the livelihoods and lifestyles of men in Africa's urban informal economy. I look at the relationship between masculinity, work and globalization from the perspective of two groups of peripheral men who symbolize the political and economic dimensions of the crisis in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire: street-level political propagandists (orators) for former President Laurent Gbagbo and mobile street vendors, respectively. My analysis is premised on the fact that adult masculine identity in Côte d'Ivoire is predicated on formal work and marriage, two criteria the men I studied were unable to meet. I include analyses of public spaces where these men frequent to explore the relationship between urban informality and masculine identity.

In what I term "complicit nationalist masculinity," the orators used narratives of Ivoirian exceptionalism and invested in the ruling regime to ensure their livelihoods, gain status, and secure their post-crisis futures. Moreover, denouncing Franco-Ivoirian neocolonial relations they blamed the unemployment crisis on a "Francophone" reliance on the state bureaucracy. They advocated an "Anglophone" pro-business state and imagined themselves as patriotic entrepreneurs at the country's helm. In what I term "complicit global masculinity," the vendors had no ties to the state and were targets of informal state extraction and harassment. In seeking self-affirmation they bypassed the state and identified with media images of black masculinity from the African diaspora. They were complicit because, rendered redundant as non-productive men, they inserted themselves into the neoliberal economy through consumption-oriented identities popularized in mainstream media and corporate advertising.

In both strategies, peripheral men's relationship to the global economy has transitioned from exploitation to exclusion; men thereby respond not by resisting but by seeking to belong. In short, I argue that unable to be producers and providers via the formal economy, peripheral Abidjanais men search for political or cultural alternatives wherein they may incorporate into local and global society.