Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt

os trabalhos de James Ferguson são como bons romances, podem ler-se mais do que uma vez e há sempre algo de novo a aprender.este, em especial, é soberbo.

A highly readable and absorbing, as well as challenging book that is not getting dated very fast…..as it so clearly shows, capital, commodities and lives are world-meshed

For those familiar with the field of anthropology, the topic of modernity is a familiar one, even as expected one. Much ink in the 1980s and 1990s has been dedicated to this hotly debated and contested topic. The reason why modernity is so contested lies in its teleology, its expectation of an end - that the underdeveloped peoples in the Global South will eventually catch up with the western world to become truly modern. Critics then argue that there's no such thing as modernity because it is absurd to assume that all countries march towards the same goals since the very nature of goals is a subjective one.This is the background against which James Ferguson writes his well thought and sensitive ethnography. Rather than validating the finality of the modernity telos (proponents of modernity theory) or dismissing it altogether (critics of modernity) Ferguson focuses on the impact and consequences the very discourse of modernity (one taken on not only by anthropologists but states, corporations and media outlets) has of everyday people.Ferguson begins by acknowledging and deconstructing the discourse of modernity by looking at the history of Zambia from the 1950s onwards. Once hailed as the pearl of Africa due to its copper industry, the sudden drop in commodity prices in the 1970s took its toll on local people who did in fact embark and bought into the discourse of modernity. Workers in the copper fields in Zambia had to deal with the expectation of modernity and the realization that such dreams could no longer be fulfilled.Despite the dramatic economic decline, the discourse of modernity was still there (in Zambia and elsewhere) and it impacted locals in many and profound ways. So the book is both about modernity-making statecraft (with wives of miners being trained into the arts of modern domestic lives), the expectations of retirement (life after work in a modern age) but also the modernity of abjection - where locals develop a sense not only that modernity isn't happening but that modernity in backing in reverse, thus becoming a backwards evolution - and how people think of this reality, how they navigate socially (from the village or the city and viceversa) and how they experience and try to make sense of the many of the pitfalls of their social and economic endeavors.This is an excellent book not only because of its rich theoretical implications but also because of how Ferguson manages to make a very complex topic accessible to the the reader by presenting the history and debates within the field of modernization theory.After reading this book, the buyer should expect:1. To understand the debate around modernization theory (what both supporters and critics have to say about it).2. To understand Ferguson's own take on modernity (which takes a non-liniar, non modernist trajectory)3. To read vivid, often times dramatic ethnographic accounts from the field.4. To be infinitely enriched intellectually around a topic we often talk about without fully understanding what we're saying. :)I strongly recommend this book.

The book was in perfect condition but the book itself was not the most enticing read.