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Identity economics: social networks and the informal economy in Nigeria

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