Cornell University Press The Act of Living: Street Life, Marginality, and Development in Urban Ethiopia

The Act of Living explores the relation between development and marginality in Ethiopia, one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. Replete with richly depicted characters and multi-layered narratives on history, everyday life and visions of the future, Marco Di Nunzio's ethnography of hustling and street life is an investigation of what is to live, hope and act in the face of the failing promises of development and change. Di Nunzio follows the life trajectories of two men, "Haile" and "Ibrahim," as they grow up in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, enter street life to get by, and turn to the city's expanding economies of work and entrepreneurship to search for a better life. Apparently favourable circumstances of development have not helped them achieve social improvement. As their condition of marginality endures, the two men embark in restless attempts to transform living into a site for hope and possibility. By narrating Haile and Ibrahim's lives, The Act of Living explores how and why development continues to fail the poor, how marginality is understood and acted upon in a time of promise, and why poor people's claims for open-endedness can lead to better and more just alternative futures. Tying together anthropology, African studies, political science, and urban studies, Di Nunzio takes readers on a bold exploration of the meaning of existence, hope, marginality, and street life. Review "Those who are excluded from enjoying the benefits of economic growth, even when integrated into projects of national development, and yet manage to keep open the possibility of being something other than their constraints, are here accorded the seriousness they deserve. In this masterwork of storytelling, political analysis, philosophical reflection, and street smarts, the tensions of living poor are rendered with all of their complexities and inventiveness. Like its two main Ethiopian protagonists and makers of history, the book keeps moving across various repertoires of urban practices to grapple with the incommensurability of lives simultaneously self-fashioned and subjugated. Rarely have the details about making a good life no matter the systematic constraints been depicted with such unflinching understanding and compassion." Author: AbdouMaliq Simone, University of Sheffield, and author of For the City Yet to Come "With double digit economic growth over the years, Ethiopia has been a paragon of "Africa rising". Yet, the much vaunted economic success has excluded and marginalized a sizable portion of its population, notably its youth. This book is a tale of that exclusion and the struggle to overcome it. It is anchored on the lives of two archetypical characters who resort to street smartness (aradanet in Ethiopian parlance) not just to survive but rather to live and attain a modicum of dignity. It is a life that has within itself the potential of possibility and reversibility. This fascinating story forms an important backdrop to the change that the country is undergoing currently." Author: Bahru Zewde, author of The Quest for Socialist Utopia "This masterful book combines an intimate and detailed account of young men's lives with a broadbrushstroke insight into wider issues. Following two young 'parking guys' in Addis Ababa who withstand their marginality through smartness and toughness, it shows how these 'acts of living' illuminate changes in Ethiopian (and African) social and economic life. Democratisation, transcending an authoritarian approach in which poor urban youth were seen as dangerous vagrants, involved attempts to include them by 'developing' the street economy. But this deepened forms of political subjugation for those unable to mobilize the all important relational networks upon which any chance of social mobility depends. Challenging existing accounts that criticize neoliberalism, the book eschews simple binaries, showing instead how 'acts of living,' although unable to slough of