Anthropology in the Margins: Comparative Ethnographies

8. Productivity in the Margins: The Reconstitution of State Power in the Chad Basin

How is it that when one travels to the edge of the desert in the midst of austerity, one finds a stronghold of movement and mobility? How is it that the recent history of deregulation and privatization in this no-man’s-land created by long-standing political neglect and ongoing factional fighting has not decimated the possibilities for livelihood? These questions about the incommensurability between dispossession and wealth creation nagged me throughout my stay in the Chad Basin.1 They are central to the following reflections on productivity in the margins of state power in that same region, where we witness both conflict over regulatory authority and its dispersion through knots of power relations tied through cords of unregulated economic activity that span national borders. These borders have been critical to the current reconfiguration of state power in the Chad Basin and on the African continent more generally. One of the most striking things about the landscape of the Chad Basin is the intense movement that takes place under the blazing sun and through the hot, dry air, along dusty paths aligned with thorny bushes and down steaming tarmac roads. This physical movement includes caravans of young men on bicycles, who pedal the long 191 8 Productivity in the Margins The Reconstitution of State Power in the Chad Basin Janet Roitman blistering routes and cross the mountain passes between Cameroon and Nigeria in their quest for black-market petrol, which they bring back to the cities in large plastic containers, attached behind them in potentially explosive towers. These young men are joined by streams of blue Suzuki motorcycles imported from Nigeria and in the service of all kinds of commerce, from transporting contraband to serving as clandestine taxis. This movement also includes old-style caravans, now composed of hefty six- to ten-wheel trucks, which ply the Sahara piled high with merchandise, dry goods, foodstuffs, and men, the occasional Kalashnikov poking out from under a mass of white robes and canvas bags. Some of the movement best qualifies as exchanges and transformations , or value conversions. The most obvious of these are constant monetary conversions, mostly inspired by currency differentials between franc-zone monies and the Nigerian naira, as well as the need to move from nonconvertible currencies, such as the franc CFA, to convertible ones. But these exchanges also involve the swapping, counterfeiting , and accumulation of national identity cards, voter registration cards, high school and university diplomas, and birth certificates. Generally interpreted as beyond the state or even antistate, these activities are often quite misleadingly called “the informal economy.” However, while they often share the characteristic of circumventing state economic regulation, these economic activities cannot be described or understood as marking out a realm distinct from state power, either in terms of their organization or their functioning (for a critique of the concept of the informal economy, see Roitman 1990; Hibou 1996). To the contrary, such activities are fundamentally linked to the state and are even essential to the very recomposition of state power in present conditions of extreme austerity. The tactics of mobility and misdemeanor inherent to activities associated with unregulated markets circumscribe targets of wealth, etching out new economic spaces, and constitute, in themselves, objects of economic regulation. In this latter capacity, they are at the heart of the postcolonial state’s endeavor to fill its coffers and finance its constituents. By underscoring that point, this presentation of productivity in the margins does not necessarily con- firm predictions about the demise of state power on the African continent . Nor does it demonstrate ways in which unregulated economic activities are potential bases for capitalist economic activity (de Soto JANET ROITMAN 192 1989), shadow economies that sometimes surpass nodes of state power (Nordstrom 2001), or parallel economies that undermine internal state legitimacy but not juridical sovereignty (Reno 2001). Over the past decade, African states have been generally depicted in academic research and media commentary as “weak states” (Migdal 1988; Kaplan 1994; Zartman 1995; Reno 1995), a view often interpreted in terms of their failure to adhere to the Weberian model of the rational-legal state. In short, these kinds of states are characterized as having limited capacity with respect to resource extraction, social control , and policy implementation. Thus, they lack authority and legitimacy in the domestic realm, often leading to a loss of control over territories and populations. Likewise, and following from...