Illness in Between : Uncertainty and Everyday Crisis in the Life of a Factory Worker in Northern Nigeria

抄録

As economic conditions in many urban centres deteriorate, considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to reciprocal relationships, i.e. social relationships based on kinship, friendship, or home town associations, especially in Africa. This, however, should not lead only to the view that reciprocal relations are sufficient to mitigate the crises caused by capitalism. The case study of a factory worker in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, suggests that capitalist relations and reciprocal relations do not merely exist as two alternative systems but mutually transform each other, and that the contradictory interaction between them is partly responsible for the crisis situation of urbanites. The crises that the factory worker encounters in his everyday life range from bodily ailments and fear of witchcraft to financial problems. However these problems are often interrelated and largely attributable to the contradictions between the logic of his kinship network extending from home and the logic of the factory he works for in the city. On the one hand, the recruitment of his kinship network into the factory enhances his image among his kin but it also increases his reciprocal obligations. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that he can meet these obligations, since the capitalist logic of the factory is strong enough to partly counteract the logic of kinship. Thus he suffers and has to manage his sufferings in this uncertain social and cultural space in between home and the city. An examination of problems that can emerge from this space may give some insight into the lives of urbanites in Africa.