From peripatetic anthropology to the ethnography of roads and motorisation in Africa

Hiace al camí de Lazareto a Mindelo (São Vicente [Cap Verd], 2015).

FROM PERIPATETIC ANTHROPOLOGY TO THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF ROADS AND MOTORISATION IN AFRICA

[CADERNOS DE ESTUDOS AFRICANOS, 2019, 37: 213-233]

Gerard Horta

Abstract: This paper, which is based on 10 months of field work between 2009 and 2015 in Cape Verde, provides an overview of the anthropological literature in which motor vehicles and African roads are studied as social phenomena. Until the end of the twentieth century, most ethnographies have failed to focus on the countless social processes linked to the development of mobility by road and the motorisation of transportation in Africa, or on the role played by cars and roads as symbols of a globalised modernity. This paper reviews the research by authors who, from the 1930s onwards, mention African roads and the use of motor vehicles as spaces in which social situations and processes take place. The several symbolic and instrumental dimensions of the motorisation of road transportation in Africa are discussed as well.

Keywords: Anthropology of African Roads, African Mobility, Motorisation in Africa.

***

From the late 1990s onwards, there are plenty of references made to the role played by roads and motor vehicles in African societies, but its invisibilisation during the previous period is obvious.[1] If the journey is the ethnographer’s object of observation, and also the object of his or her reflection as an anthropologist (Augé, 2007: 71), then what is the reason for this invisibilisation? The implicit multiplicity of approaches to the journey resides in the journey itself, since any journey is at the same time a movement in space, in time and –depending on the departure and arrival contexts- in social hierarchy (Lévi-Strauss, 1969 [1955]: 79).

 

Even though the twentieth century is the century of motorisation, the use of motorised land vehicles by anthropologists in Africa does not usually appear in their accounts, neither past nor present. Concepts such as “car”, “road”, “mobility”, “motorisation”, and even “transportation”, are missing from analytical indexes and accounts.[2] References to the presence of cars and trucks in African roads have been late to appear in the anthropological literature. Kuklick (1991: 151) mentions cars only once when dealing with the 1929 expedition of archaeologist Caton-Thompson (when the Rhodesian Transportation Department lent her a car). There are no theoretical reflections on the social dimensions of roads and cars. Nevertheless, the history of Africa is closely tied to social processes stemming from the development of motorisation and roads. From May 1931 to February 1933, Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris and other European ethnographers carried out the Dakar-Djibouti Mission from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The mission unfolded as a gathering of objects for museum collections as well as a fruitful ethnographic exploration. They travelled by foot, boat, canoe, train, truck, mule, donkey, camel, cart... and by car, with the sponsorship of the Citroën company.[3] Michel Leiris became the first anthropologist to mention roads and cars in his field diary.

The Journey and the Road as Social Process

In his diary, Leiris (2007 [1934]: 795) wonders: ‘Why travel? This way of seizing things, will it prevent us from being unarmed on the occasions in which it is written that we should be unarmed?’ (27-XII-1932). The ethnographer travels by car through bumpy roads, and for the first time he succinctly describes what happens in the course of the journey. What happens to the car, to the people inside, to the people who they run into and interact with, and to the road itself. If this first peripatetic anthropology is indebted to “travel literature” (Delgado, 2012), then the anthropology of mobility and the emerging anthropology of traffic should not be alien to it.

 

The anthropology of roads shares with the anthropology of traffic its focus on the culture of traffic, the culture of risk and accidents, the social construction of the regulation of the traffic of wheeled vehicles, and the development of the processes and systems of transportation of people and commodities. Aside from this closeness –always verging on the edge of incest-, roads embody a social process in which the collective life of any society emerges to the surface through movement. Every society flows onto its roads. Perhaps the roads express the paradoxical confirmation of the triumph of sedentism, since they work as a means of communication between points inhabited by people on a permanent basis (tellingly, the hunter-gatherers don’t need roads to assert their never-ending mobility).

 

As pointed out by Estevan (1996: 208-209), within the terminology of transportation the concept of “mobility” is a quantitative parameter that refers to the movements performed by people and commodities in a specific socio-economic domain. It is expressed in individual terms, such as the average number of journeys or km travelled per person, or in aggregate terms, such as the total number of journeys or km travelled by the inhabitants of a specific place. On the contrary, the concept of “accessibility” is a qualitative variable, since it indicates the ease (I would add the ability or possibility) with which people from a specific place can cover the distance to other places where they will find the means to satisfy their needs or desires. According to Estevan, the standard view of transportation understands the improvement of accesibility as the facilitation of movement (the efficiency of the transportation system). This entails an emphasis on the constant reinforcement of infrastructures, vehicles and the system of transportation as a whole. All of which facilitates the increase of motorised mobility and transportation. On the other hand, a different point of view links accessibility with proximity: spatially or geographically speaking, the less movement required to satisfy a need or desire, the more accessible they will be. Different models –with different social consequences- are developed depending on how each society constructs or asserts its interpretation of transportation and accessibility. This is why we must remember Hannerz’ claim –cited by Juan (1997: 25)– regarding the fact that physical accessibility does not guarantee social accessibility.

 

Penny Harvey (Khazaleh [2013]) claims that roads include different sorts of spatial dynamics due to the great variety of social relations which are developed within them. How are the urban strands –villages and cities- fused together other than through these traffic routes called roads? Augé (2007: 33) argues that urban projects are conceived with respect to the relationships between the urban “interior” and “exterior”. This implies that the design of roads, highways, airports, train stations, bus lanes, taxis –Hiace vans-, and motorised vehicles in general is shaped by the model of social relations intended to be established. Where can we find, then, in the universal megalopolis, the “empty” and “porous” zones (Augé follows Philippe Vasset’s terminology), the dark side of universalisation? How much intensity, how much life, is born, grows and dies in these “porous” zones so acutely impoverished under colonization?

 

In the context of the process of motorisation in Africa, Gewald/Luning/Walraven (2009: 1-18) highlight the wide range of transformations caused by the introduction of cars in the twentieth century: cultural, economic, political, military, urban, medical, educational, religious, ecological, communicative, and regarding interpersonal relationships.[4] However, the study of these transformations has been –up to a certain point– very limited, even if in vast African regions transportation depends entirely on motorised vehicles. Out of the more than 1,000 papers presented at the meetings of the African Studies Association (ASA) between 1990 and 1997, only one dealt with the impact of motorised road vehicles in Africa. The paper by Chilundo (1992) for the ASA meeting was based on research on motorised traffic in which the economical aspects had the utmost relevance.

 

Gewald/Luning/Walraven claim that the ground-breaking scholarship on this topic has more distant origins. According to them, it starts with the classic work by Hill (1963) on the use of vehicles by the cocoa farmers in Ghana, which was followed by the ethnographies by Lewis (1970) on the transporters association of the Ivory Coast, by Silverstein (1983) on the local strategies of transportation in Nigeria, and by Stoller (1989) on the importance of the regulation and structuring of road transportation. We must add the ground-breaking studies by Margaret Field (1960) on the rural drivers in Ghana from an ethnopsychiatric point of view; by Jordan (1978) on the daily behaviour of truck drivers in West Africa; and by Peace (1988) on mobility in South-West Nigeria.

 

The real boom of scholarship in this field took place in the beginning of the twentieth-first century. According to Gewald/Luning/Walraven (2009: 5), the construction of African roads did not uniquely respond to the aim of transporting goods and people since, of course, the mining and agricultural products of colonial plundering had to be transported through somewhere. Historically, roads have played a pivotal role in the control, repression and imposition of colonial discipline over African societies by means of the transportation of military troops and arms. Moreover, roads represent a key factor of modernisation for African state bureaucracies, both before and after the formal processes of independence.[5]

 

As communication and transportation devices, roads and their vehicles have been useful to the revolutionary or anti-colonial causes as well, thus turning back against their own promoters. This is the case of the Kikuyu taxis during the Mau Mau revolution in Kenya, between 1952 and 1960, under British colonial rule. The organisational structure of the taxi drivers’ associations and trade unions was essential for the articulation of the movement, and the vehicles of the Kikuyu were used both for carrying and hiding their leaders and for moving information around (Ference, 2011). Walraven (2009) offers a similar example concerning the uprisings in the French Niger between 1954 and 1966, in which drivers offered their vehicles –and their lives- to the revolutionary cause.

 

In turn, Graeber (2011 [2004]: 64) refers to the Tsimihety in the West coast of Madagascar and to their rejection of the Sakalava monarchy’s authority when arguing that a collective project lies behind every social group. Under French colonial rule, the Tsimihety accepted to meet with the representatives sent by the Administration, whose goal was to obtain an adult workforce in order to build a road next to a Tsimihety village. But when the team in charge of the construction works returned to the village, they found it abandoned. Its inhabitants had fled to other places to live with their relatives, rejecting participation in the colonial program of forced labor that was to be imposed on them. 

 

Writing on the Bakoya in Gabon, Soengas (2009: 189) points out that the opening of roads by the French army in the 1930s caused major changes in the social and spatial organisation of the communities, which from then on came in contact with “the white people”. The construction of roads and the beginning of motorised traffic entailed a rise in inequality within rural populations, as happened in Ghana and Nigeria (Porter, 2012), in a process that began in the colonial period but extended beyond formal independence. In this context, a mysticism of speed and modernity linked to motorised vehicles was developed, and was immediately inscribed in representations of masculinity.

 

The introduction of vehicles in Africa also entailed the visibilisation of several racial and class contradictions, inherent to the same colonial system that had imported roads and motorisation into African societies. The work by geographer Gordon Pirie informs us of the complaints that both whites and blacks addressed to the South African authorities in charge of the public bus system, a set of reasons in which the conditions of transportation, the segregation and racial abuse, as well as the class differences within the black population in the rural public buses between 1925 and 1955 are made explicit (Pirie, 1990). The same author offers us an overview of one of the favourite -and exclusive- activities of the white social classes in African colonies: motor racing clubs. Maps and guides of African roads that included lodgings and supply points for motor vehicles multiplied from the first decade of the twentieth century onwards. At the same time, literary fiction linked to the exotic journey was in all of its splendour, stimulating colonial representations (Pirie, 2013). In the 1920s and 1930s, the motorised expeditions across the whole continent –sponsored by the manufacturing companies themselves– brought to the rural parts of Africa a strange blend of scientists, travellers and colonists (Pirie, 2011). In the context of the colonial political rule of European societies over the African continent, a new sort of journey defined by a taste for adventure became established: dangerous trails, treacherous topographies and harsh weather appear as the main “attractions” of the rallies that from then on race through Africa.[6] Around the 1960s, in the new political contexts that led to the independence processes –and also due to the takeoff of the aeronautical industry-, the motor racing clubs gradually abandoned the cross-border routes and focused their activities within the sphere of the State and on the promotion of road maintenance (Pirie, 2013).

 

The wide variety of dynamic processes in African societies is reflected in the social universe of the development of transportation and motorisation. The anthropological and sociological approaches to the culture of road transportation, the motorised vehicle, and the several dimensions of its impact on social life have defined very specific research fields. This has enabled both an increase in comparative analysis (Miller [ed.], 2001) and the development of anthropological and sociological scholarship on urbanisation processes, land transportation routes, risk, safety, or traffic (the list is endless) beyond the explicit references to Africa.

 

Ritualities, processes of technologisation, “moral geographies”, “informal” economies, or motorisation as agency, are central issues in the boom of scholarship regarding Africa from the late 1990s onwards. Alongside the overviews on urbanisation and interurban mobility in the continent as a whole, a schematic bibliographical territorialisation of the wide variety of topics dealt with by this scholarship (such as: commerce and transportation; construction of roads under colonial rule; interurban transportation of passengers; urbanisation processes; relationships between vehicles, drivers and “entrepreneurship”; relationships between drivers and power or status; relationships between vehicles and pedestrians on the roads; the symbolisation of vehicles; accident rates; etc.) encompasses a big portion of Africa.[7]

 

Regarding the ethnographic references on mobility in African roads and the role of motorised vehicles by anthropologists writing in the first two thirds of the twentieth century, we must recall some aspects and situations which in later decades will become explicit topics of study. However, we must take into account (Dalakoglou/Harvey, 2012: 462) the scarcity of references to interurban mobility, roads and motorised transportation in African urban anthropology –with exception of G. Wilson in Zambia, E. Hellmann and B. Sundkler in South Africa, and by the Manchester anthropologists affiliated to the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (Hannerz, 1993 [1980]: 162-163 and 179-187). This is an area in which research needs to be undertaken, and it cannot be spared by referring to the long list of anthropological studies about nomadic and cattle-breeding societies in Africa, as Dalakoglou/Harvey (2012) do. On the whole, it results difficult to trace the consideration of roads and motorised transportation in the ethnographies written throughout the best part of the last century.

The First References to Roads

Beyond describing the day to day of his almost two-year-long research during the Dakar-Djibouti mission, Leiris includes in his narration the events which occurred on the road whilst traveling by car. In L’Afrique Fantôme [Ghostly Africa], he deals with fundamental contexts for the study of roads as social phenomena. The changing caravan of anthropologists, translators, chefs, assistants and an endless list of companions rarely travels by van or by car. We will focus our attention on the car. Leiris writes in his field diary the situations in which the car takes part. In his account, the car appears as a means of business for the indigenous (8-VI-1931); as a place of weariness due to the discomfort of the journey (30-VI-1931); as a victim of the deplorable conditions of roads and bridges, as well as of harsh weather (8-VII-1931); as a sign, by means of the horn, of an imminent announcement (14-VII-1931); as protagonist of crashes with animals which cross the road, as well as a moving device for hunting them (25-VIII-1931).

 

In other occasions he describes how the presence of the vehicle on the road provokes unexpected encounters (a sick man lying down on the way) (15-XII-1931). The car also appears as a factor of accidental deaths (30-XII-1931); as grounds for argument under the pressure of a social environment demanding that ethnographers assist them with the vehicle to transport them to other locations (15-I-1932) –see below the testimony of Rabinow in Morocco, 40 years later; as protagonist of the forced end of a journey due to a non-fatal accident in which the vehicle and its load are left destroyed (17-I-1932); as a container of long trips –a day-long journey of 100km along precarious roads (22-I-1932); as a vehicle which has suddenly broken down and finds itself dependent on a greater vehicle (a truck, in this case) (17-IV-1932); as a method of transportation that sometimes relies on a drunken chauffeur (30-IV-1932); and finally, as a means of transportation for animals, who like humans are also prone to vomit (22-XII-1932). In a final note regarding the 8th and 9th of December, 1931 (Ibidem: 835), Leiris reflects on the social exceptionality of the profound happiness of an administrator who has found a faster way to construct roads and bridges, which would save the people he administered 'a significant number of days of service' –that is, forced labour.

 

These situations form part of any ethnography of roads. To the extent that Leiris’ field diary is significant for the analysis of the observed social relations and his role in them, the fact that he considered necessary to leave written testimony of what happened, and how it happened, when travelling by car, makes him the first ethnographer to acknowledge the usefulness of cars and roads as elements of anthropological reflection.

 

Soon after the return of the mission directed by Leiris, another mission left for Brasil: the 'French University Mission', in which Claude Lévi-Strauss participated. From his time in the University of Sao Paulo, Lévi-Strauss undertook, between 1935 and 1939, various trips to Mato Grosso and the Amazon, where he studied the Kadiwéu, Bororo, Nambikwara, Aikanã and Tupi-Kawahib societies. Of course, he comes across very few cars, but tells that the land which spans the road from Santos to San Paulo is one of the first exploited terrains in the country. He refers to the place as an 'archeological site dedicated to a deceased agriculture'.  In the valleys, the vegetation reclaims possession of the soil again: what is found now is no more 'the noble architecture of the primitive jungle'. The European landscape is ostensibly subjected to mankind, hence the bewilderment experienced when he is confronted with something that does not fit within our traditional categories (Lévi-Strauss, 1969 [1955]: 89).

 

From field work carried out in Zululand at the end of the 1930s, Max Gluckman (1940) records the European domination and explains that groups of equal social status are not separated. Whereas the Zulu cannot venture into the reserves of the white group –except as domestic servants- Europeans can move freely amongst the Zulu, observe them and at times take photos of them.

 

Gluckman understands that the schism between the two groups of color is in itself the pattern of their integration in a community. In a given moment, he tells of the inauguration of a bridge in order to describe the supposed formal reason for its construction (to facilitate the mobility of the magistrate) and its immediate social effects (the access to a hospital by Zulu women). He makes almost no ethnographical references to the experiences lived on the road, but three observations can nevertheless be noted: firstly, he describes how, during a trip to Nongoma in his automobile, he stops to pick up an elderly man; secondly, he narrates another journey by car together with the Zulu king, whose car is responded to by the Zulu with the royal salute; thirdly, he mentions the automobile as an object of social status only accessible to Europeans and few Zulu.

 

In his writings based on field work undertaken in Africa in the late 1940s, George Balandier (1955 and 1962 [1957]: 191-224) makes no mention of automobiles. Instead, he outlines the segregating character of the planning of urban spaces by the colonial power, as well as the anomic uprooting of rural immigrants in growing cities such as Brazzaville, Lagos or Dakar. Both are reflections of colonial capitalism’s opulence and speculation, greatness and precariousness of the material and social conditions of the majority of the population. Reflections of the immense explosions of urban colonial societies, the emergence of incipient labour unions which in fact collaborate with the colonial power, the new heroes of western cinematic mythology, the changing contexts of the commodification of sex and love, the submission to the tough and implacable law of 'working without happiness', the effervescence of saturday nights and sundays, the imposition of names on streets and squares, the construction of an illusion to 'our' image and convenience, the gap between reality and hope...

 

All these processes have been historically parallel to the expansion of roads and traffic as a means of colonisation and transportation of goods and people. The reference to the fact that the construction of roads has brought to an end the supposed isolation of certain human groups, as Levi-Strauss writes (1966:125),  has become a general principle, although in his work we do not find the reflections of social life on the roads. Beals/Hoijer (1965: 405-449) devote a section to the transportation of animals and vehicles throughout history, focusing their attention on the Baganda of Eastern Africa, who they describe as the builders of an elaborate system of roadways used for walking, human strength being the only means of transportation. And Knutsson (1976 [1969]: 124), when referring to the polyethnic village-market in Mecha (Ethiopia), links the high mobility, the creation of commercial villages and the growth of existing populations, and points to the fundamental role played by the construction of roads in order to understand this development. The expansion of motorisation in urban spaces throughout Africa has been recent (Hannerz, 1998 [1996]: 14), and even more so with regard to interurban transportation. Whereas generic comments regarding the poor quality of road infrastructures -in comparison with the western standard- span decades of anthropological research, the attention given to the car and the road is very uncommon.

 

This potential anthropology of roads has been dismissed for decades to the waste bin of the social sciences. In anthropology textbooks, introductions to the discipline and dictionaries, the references to the processes of construction of roads and motorization in relation to colonial expansion are in general inexistent, or to a certain point disparaging of a concept –‘road'- stripped of the social universe which it signifies and in which it is inscribed. Peacock, in his introductory anthropology textbook, defines the entrance into field work in these terms (2001[1986]: 129): 'But neither is it a simple adventure which ends in itself; one is not simply 'on the road', but 'on the field', and must mobilise himself to find his place in it and, afterwards, to understand it'.

 

In his field work in Sefrou (Morocco), Clifford Geertz states the centrality of the car in saving time while travelling ('I hired a car. No more buses. No more waiting’, in Slyomovics [2010]). And the amalgam of images that Paul Rabinow offers us (1992 [1977]), also from his field work in Morocco, points towards new dimensions. He describes tracks, trails, paths without asphalt, curving, empty or tortuous roads with potholes dangerously close to ravines, night-time journeys by car while arguing with an angry informant who gets out of the vehicle and condemns himself to walking the remaining 8km. Rabinow (Ibidem: 112) tells of the relief he feels when his car explodes, because it spares him from the unbearable pressure he suffers by way of a village demanding to be driven here or there, for this and that: 'I stopped the car in front of the hospital. No, they told me, go a little further up the street, to the market. But didn’t you tell me that you were dying? Yes, she replied, but I have to do some shopping' (Ibidem: 88).

 

In his first field work in the Dowayo land, Barley (1989 [1983]) describes how his car is used as a taxi and ambulance by the community. Half of the references regarding the vehicle concern its repairs and the tremendous cost that they imply. On another occasion he tells of the local interpretation of the arrival of a car (Ibidem: 65): 'There were fields on both sides of the road. The people who worked them stopped their tasks to watch us as we advanced laboriously. Some fled. Later I realised that they believed we were sent by the sous-prefet’. The uneasiness caused by the bad condition of the roads appears regularly (Ibidem: 103): 'The old maps still indicate a roadway running through the valley, but nowadays it is found to be in a pretty sorry state'. The first page of the book (Barley, 1993 [1986]) based on his second field work with the Dowayo, some years later, contains a map which distinguishes three types of roadways: official roads, passable roads for vehicles and mountain trails. Screeching breaks under threatening storms, illegal transportation of beer and the figure of the anthropologist as the community chauffeur accompany the references made to the vehicle.

 

Other examples of the generic attention paid by anthropology to roads and and motor vehicles as social phenomena can be found in the work of Marjorie Shostak (1990: 23 and 349). In her field work with Nisa, the !Kung woman from the Kalahari desert, she describes the situation in the !Kung village as follows: 'Roadways with transport trucks, shops, schools and even a clinic exist today in the Dobe land...'. She also narrates the night-time arrival to a !Kung village located beyond the road on which she has driven the Land rover. In turn, Jean and John Comaroff (2002) mention roads in contextual terms in their account of the incendiary apocalypse witnessed in South Africa’s Cape Peninsula. The roads are described as victims of this great fire (since they are closed to traffic), as the object of pyromaniac desire (it is the case of a rural roadway), as space for the establishment –in its margins- of camps of settlers from the rural interior areas (it is the case of the main roads), and as a place for the sale of small packages of braai wood to mostly suburban, white, and middle class travelers.

Centrality of the Vehicle in African Social Life

Gewald/Luning/Walraven (2009: 10) address the obvious impact of motorised vehicles in almost all aspects of African daily life. This makes it all the more intriguing why anthropologists, during the twentieth century, have disregarded cars and roads as a research focus. Every social scientist in Africa has experienced being on the streets and roads, waiting for the bus, a collective taxi, or a Hiace van. In his pioneering work, Kopytiff (1986) suggests the need of considering the motorised vehicle as a central element of African social life.

 

As Geest claims, perhaps anthropologists, in their anxiety to discover 'the exotic', have overlooked those material elements -like the car- which come from the West and are too familiar to their eyes, considering them for this reason little worthy of anthropological attention. Or perhaps, we might add, motorisation evokes dimensions of the colonial process that are too terrifying.[8] Whatever it might be, anthropologists have only recently treated the car in Africa as an object deserving of their attention. Peace (1988) mentions this absence in his ethnography about the organisation of transport, the owners of vehicles and the drivers of a Nigerian village in the north of Lagos. At the same time he laments that the analysis of transportation and its economic, legal, and political dimensions, remain relegated to the domain of economists and geographers.

 

More recently, Klaeger (2009) has claimed that an anthropology of roads must go beyond the functional perspective (the social impact of the infrastructures, their causes and the political corollary of their construction) in order to address the representational aspects: 'The study of the semantics of symbols, metaphors and narratives' (Ibidem: 216).[9] It results paradoxical that, the car being a means of transportation as well as a force of power and prestige on a global scale, it has been neglected by anthropologists in their research. Some years ago, Verrips/Meyer (2001: 156) made a compilation of anthropological literature on cars and motorised driving when they began their study in this area. They found little material regarding Africa (the already cited Field, Jordan and Peace), mostly focused in social networks and contact with passengers, thus confirming the lack of research on the material dimensions of the car as an object.[10]

Conclusion

Roads condense the global circulation of a society to the extent that they unite one point with another. At the same time, roads are found between us and between those two points, allowing for physical and social connections and disconnections. The presence of roads tends to transform the relations and life of a social group, and all class of economic, political and cultural processes converge on them. The role of cars and vehicles for the transportation of people and goods is, in this context, fundamental to the general history of Africa. In fact, the development of colonisation itself is inseparable from the development of motorisation and overland communication. Although Africanist anthropologists and sociologists have not deepened their research about cars and roads as social phenomena, some of them (beginning with Michel Leiris in the 1930s) deal with the different dimensions of this phenomena. What has been put forward, therefore, is a brief overview of those pioneering studies and their descriptions and representations of the relationships between road, automobile and society.

 

Bibliography

Afejuku, D. H. (1988), Theft under a Motor Insurance Policy in Nigeria, in: Zambia Law Journal, 20, 20-31.

Agadjanian, Victor (2002), Men Doing `Women’s Work´: Masculinity and Gender Relations among Street Vendors in Maputo, Mozambique, in: The Journal of Men’s Studies, 19, 3, 329-342.

Akurang-Parry, Kwabena Opare (2001), Colonial Forced Labor Strategies for Road-Building in the Gold Coast (Southern Ghana) and International Anti-Forced Labor Pressures, 1900-1940, in: African Economic History, 28, 23-47.

Alber, Erdmute (1998), ‘Motorisation and Colonial Rule’, paper presented at the conference Colonial Everyday Life in Africa, Leipzig, October 7-8.

Alem, Genet (2013), ‘Rapid Transformation of the Built Environment and its Adverse Impact on Pedestrian Movement’, paper presented at the 5th European Conference on African Studies, Lisbon, June 27-29.

Alonso, Marta, and Francesca Nucci (2011), ‘Circulación en la ciudad de Nuakchot: Diagnóstico y resolución de accidentes’, paper presented at the 12th Meeting of the Spanish Federation of Anthropology Associations (FAAEE), León, September 6-9.

Asiedu, Alex B., and Samuel Agyei-Mensa (2008), Traders on the Run: Activities of Street Vendors in the Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana, in: Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift, 62, 3, 191-202.

Augé, Marc (2007), Por una antropología de la movilidad, Barcelona: Gedisa.

Balandier, Georges (1955), Sociologie des Brazzavilles noires, Paris: Armand Colin.

Balandier, Georges (1962 [1957]), Africa ambiguë, Paris: UGE.

Banyikwa, William F. (1988), Urban Passenger Transport Problems in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in: African Urban Quarterly, 3, 1-2, 80-93.

Barley, Nigel (1989 [1983]), El antropólogo inocente, Barcelona: Anagrama.

Barley, Nigel (1993 [1986]), Una plaga de orugas, Barcelona: Anagrama.

Beals, Ralph Leon, and Harry Hoijer (1965), An Introduction to Anthropology, New York: McMillan Company.

Beauving, Jan Joost (2004), Cotonou’s Klondike: African Traders and Second-Hand Car Markets in Benin, in: Journal of Modern African Studies, 42, 4, 1-27.

Berry, Sara (1983), From Peasant to Artisan: Motor Mechanics in a Nigerian Town, Boston: University of Boston.

Berry, Sara (1985), Fathers Work for their Sons, Berkeley: University of California.

Boesen, Elisabeth, and Laurence Marfaing (dirs) (2007), Les nouveaux urbains dans l’espace Sahara-Sahel, Paris: Karthala.

Bredeloup, Sylvie, Brigitte Bertoncello and Jérôme Lombard (eds) (2008), Abidjan, Dakar: des villes à vendre? , Paris: L’Harmattan.

Carrier, Neil (2005), The Need for Speed: Contrasting Timeframes in the Social Life of the Kenian Miraa, in: Africa, 75, 4, 539-558.

Carrier, Neil (2009), The Hilux and the `Body Thrower´: Khat Transporters in Kenya, in: Gewald, Jan-Bart, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (eds) (2009), The Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890-2000, Boston: Brill.

Chalfin, Brenda (2008), Cars, the Custom Service, and the Sumptuary Rule in Neoliberal Ghana, in: Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50, 2, 424-453.

Chalfin, Brenda (2010), Neoliberal Frontiers: An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chavis, Celeste (2012), Analyzing the Structure of Informal Transport: The Evening Commute Problem in Nairobi, Kenya, PhD Dissertation, Berkeley, University of California.

Chenal, Jérôme (2009), Urbanisation, planification urbaine et modèles de ville en Afrique de l’Ouest: jeux et enjeux de l’espace publique, Lausanne: ENAC/EPFL.

Chenal, Jérôme, Yves Pedrazzini and Benoît Vollmer (2009), Sous le soleil exactement: 11:00, Nouakchott, Mauritanie, in: EspaceTemps.net, Objets, 07.09.2009 (http://www.espacestemps.net/articles/sous-le-soleil-exactement/; retrieved : December 15, 2014).

Chenal, Jérôme, Vincent Kaufman, Guéladio Cissé and Yves Pedrazzini (eds) (2009a), Quelques rues d’Afrique: Observation et gestion de l'espace public à Abidjan, Dakar et Nouakchott, Lausannne: Lasur.

Chenal, Jérôme, Vincent Kaufman, Guéladio Cissé and Yves Pedrazzini (2009b), Esquisse d’une théorie `alter-moderne´ de la ville africaine, in: EspacesTemps.net, Travaux, 08.10.2009 (http://www.espacestemps.net/articles/esquisse-drsquoune-theorie-alter-moderne-de-la-ville-africaine/; retrieved : December 15, 2014).

Chilson, Peter (1999), Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa, Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Chilundo, Arlindo Gonçalo (1992), ‘roads, Road Transport and the Expansion of Commodity Production in Northern Mozambique’, paper presented at the Annual Conference of the African Studies Association (ASA).

Chilundo, Arlindo Gonçalo (1995), Economic and Social Impact of Rail and Road Transportation Systems in the Colonial District of Mozambique (1900–1961), PhD Dissertation, University of Minnesota.

Chitere, J. (2004), The Role and Efficiency of Matatu Workers in Nairobi, Kenya, Nairobi: Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (vol. 45).

Choplin, Armelle (2009), Nouakchott, au carrefour de la Mauritanie et du monde, Paris: Karthala.

Cole, Jennifer (1998), The Work of Memory in Madagascar, in: American Ethnologist, 25, 4, 610-633.

Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff (2002), Naturalizando la nación: aliens, apocalipsis y el estado postcolonial, in: Revista de Antropología Social, 11, 89-133.

Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine (ed) (2005), The History of African Cities South of the Sahara: From the Origins to Colonization, Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers.

Costa Morata, Pedro (1978), “La travesía del Sahara, al final de la aventura”, in: Tiempo de Historia, 47, 92-99.

Dahou, Tarik (2005), L’espace public face aux apories des études africaines, in: Cahiers d’études africaines, 178, 327-349.

Dalakoglou, Dimitris, and Penny Harvey (2012), Roads and Anthropology: Ethnographic Perspectives on Space, Time and (Im)Mobility, in: Mobilities, 7, 4, 459-465.

Dantas e Sá, Vanessa Ulia (2006), Rhythms of a Road, Voices of an Ethnographer, in: http://www.africancitiesreader.org.za/reader/chapters/22_VU.pdf (retrieved: December 15, 2014).

Date-Bah, Eugenia (1980), The Inscriptions on the Vehicles of Ghanaian Commercial Drivers: A Sociological Analysis, in: Journal of Modern African Studies, 18, 3, 523–531.

Delgado, Manuel (2012), La deuda de la etnografía con la literatura de viajes y aventuras, in: El cor de les aparences (http://manueldelgadoruiz. blogspot.com.es/2012/03/taller-de-etnografia-clase-del-2-3-12.html; retrieved: December 15, 2014).

Dia Mwembu, Donatien Dibwe (2009), Les identités urbaines en Afrique: le cas de Lumumbashi, Paris: L’Harmattan.

Dias Furtado, Jeremías (2007), Regulaçao dos transportes rodoviários, Praia: IBNL.

Díaz Olvera, Lourdes, Didien Plat and Pascal Pochet (2008), Logiques d'usage et formes d'appropriation de la voiture en Afrique subsaharienne, in: Clochard, Fabrice, Anaïs Rocci and Stéphanie Vincent (eds), Automobilités et altermobilités: Quels changements?, Paris: L'Harmattan, 199-211.

Díaz Olvera, Lourdes, Didien Plat, Pascal Pochet and Maïdadi Sahabana (2010), Entre contraintes et innovation: évolutions de la mobilité quotidienne dans les villes d’Afrique subsaharienne, in: Espace, Populations, Sociétés, 2-3, 337-348.

Díaz Olvera, Lourdes, Didien Plat, Pascal Pochet and Maïdadi Sahabana (2012), Motorbike Taxis in the `Transport Crisis´ of West and Central African Cities, in: EchoGéo [online], 20 (http://echogeo.revues.org/13080; retrieved: December 15, 2014).

Dickson, Kwamina B. (1961), The Development of Road Transport in Southern Ghana and Ashanti since about 1850, in: Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 5, 1, 33-42.

Elouga, Martin, Valentin Nga Ndongo and Luc Mebenga Tamba (eds) (2006), Dynamiques urbaines en Afrique Noire, Paris: L’Harmattan.

Estevan, Antonio (1994), Contra transporte, cercanía, in: Warc, Colin, Agustín García Calvo and Antonio Estevan (1996), Contra el automóvil, Barcelona: Virus.

Fairhead, James (1993), Paths of Authority: Roads, the State and the Market in Eastern Zaire, in: Alcántara, Cynthia Hewitt (ed), Real Markets: Social and Political Issues of Food Policy Reform, London: Frank Cass.

Ference, Meghan (2011), ‘‘Utanijenga--You Will Build Me’: Moral Ambiguity and the Stigma of Risky Business in Nairobi’s Transportation Industry’, paper presented at the ECAS - 4th European Conference on African Studies, Uppsala, June 15-18.

Field, Margaret Joyce (1960), Search for Security: An EthnoPsychiatric Study of Rural Ghana, London: Faber & Faber.

Fiori, Sandra (2010), ‘A Malian Crossroads as Labile Mobility Place’, paper presented at the 7th Iberian Congress on African Studies, Lisbon, September 9-11.

Fourchard, Laurent, and Isaac Olawale (dirs) (2003), Sécurité, crime et ségregation dans les villes de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, Paris: Karthala.

Freed, Libbie Jo (2006), Conduits of Culture and Control: Roads, States, and Users in French Central Africa, 1890–1960, PhD Dissertation, University of Wisconsin.

Geest, Sjaak van der (1989), ‘Sunny Bou’: Chauffeurs, auto’s en Highlife in Ghana, in: Amsterdam Sociologisch Tijdschrisft, 16, 1, 20-39.

Geest, Sjaak van der (2009) ‘Anyway’: Lorry Inscriptions in Ghana, in: Gewald, Jan-Bart, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (eds) (2009), The Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890-2000, Boston: Brill.

Gewald, Jan-Bart (2002), Missionaries, Hereros and Motocars: Mobility and the Impact of Motor Vehicles in Namibia before 1940, in: International Journal of African History Studies, 35, 2-3, 257-285.

Gewald, Jan-Bart, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (eds) (2009), The Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890-2000, Boston: Brill.

Giles-Vernick, Tamara (1996), Ne lege ti giriri [On the Road to History], in: Ethnohistory, 43, 2, 225-275.

Gluckman, Max (1940), The Social Organization of Modern Zululand, in: Gluckman, Max (1958), Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Godard, Xavier (2002), Les transports et la ville en Afrique au sud du Sahara, Paris: Karthala.

Graeber, David (2011 [2004]), Fragmentos de antropología anarquista, Barcelona: Virus.

Grassi, Marzia (2003), Rabidantes, Lisboa: ICS.

Green-Simms, Lindsey (2009), Postcolonial Automobility: West Africa and the Road to Globalization, PhD Dissertation, University of Minnesota.

Grieco, Margaret, Nana A. Apt and Jeff Turner (1996), At Christmas and on Rainy Days: Transport, Travel and the Female Traders of Accra (Perspectives on Europe), Aldershot: Avebury.

Hannerz, Ulf (1979), Town and Country in Southern Zaria: A View from Kafanshan, in: Southall, Aidan (ed), Small Urban Centres in Rural Development in Africa, Madison: University of Wisconsin.

Hannerz, Ulf (1998 [1980]), Exploración de la ciudad, Madrid: FCE.

Hansen, Karen Tranberg (2004), Who Rules the Streets? The Politics of Vending Space in Lusaka, in: Hansen, Karen Tranberg, and Mariken Vaa (eds), Reconsidering Informality: Perspectives from Urban Africa, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.

Hansen, Karen Tranberg (2010), Changing Youth Dynamics in Lusaka’s Informal Economy in the Context of Economic Liberalization, in: African Studies Quarterly, 11, 2-3, 13–27.

Hart, Jennifer A. (2011), ‘Suffer to Gain’: Citizenship, Accumulation, and Motor Transportation in Late-Colonial and Postcolonial Ghana, PhD Dissertation, Indiana University.

Hill, Polly (1963), The Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Horta, Gerard (2010), ‘Transporte colectivo en hiace y siniestralidad viaria interurbana en la isla de Santiago (Cabo Verde)’, paper presented at the 7th Iberian Congress on African Studies, Lisbon, September 9-11.

Horta, Gerard (2013), Interurban Collective Transport and Road Crashes in Santiago, Cape Verde, in: Etnográfica, 17, 1, 77-95.

Horta, Gerard, and Daniel Malet (2014), Hiace: Antropología de las carreteras en la isla de Santiago, Barcelona: Pol·len Edicions.

Jordan, James Williams (1978), Role Segregation for Fun and Profit: The Daily Behavior of the West African Lorry Driver, in: Africa, 48, 1, 30–46.

Juan, S. et alii (1997), Les sentiers du quotidien. París: L’Harmattan.

Kalikiti, Webby (2010), ‘Road Traffic Accidents in Zambia: Nature, Causes, Reactions and Interpretations, 1980–2000’, paper presented at the conference Managing Uncertainty: Death and Loss in Africa, University of the Witwatersrand, April 8-10.

Khazaleh, Lorenz (2013), ‘When Overheated Expectations Meet Neoliberal Policies’, Interview with Penny Harvey (www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/ projects/overheating/news/harvey.html; retrieved: December 15, 2014)

Kimani, Ndung’u (2004), The Role of the Matatu Industry in Kenya, Nairobi: Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (vol. 53).

King, Rudith (2006), Fulcrum of the Urban Economy: Governance and Street Livelihoods in Kumasi, Ghana, in: Brown, Alison (ed), Contested Space, Rugby: ITDG Publishing.

Klaeger, Gabriel (2009), Religion on the Road: The Spiritual Experience of Road Travel in Ghana, in: Gewald, Jan-Bart, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (eds), The Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890-2000, Boston: Brill.

Klaeger, Gabriel (2012a), Movements into Emotions: Kinetic Tactics, Commotion and Conviviality among Traffic Vendors in Accra, in: Hahn, Hans Peter, and Kristin Kastner (eds), Urban Life-Worlds in Motion: African Perspectives, Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag.

Klaeger, Gabriel (2012b), Rush and Relax: The Rhythms and Speeds of Touting Perishable Products on a Ghanaian Roadside, in: Mobilities, 7, 4, 533–554.

Klaeger, Gabriel (2013), Introduction: The Perils and Possibilities of African Roads, in: Africa, 83, 359-366.

Knutsson, Karl Eric (1976 [1969]), “Dicotomización e integración”, in: Barth, Fredrik (ed), Los grupos étnicos y sus fronteras, Mexico City: FCE.

Kopytoff, Igor (1986), The Cultural Biography of Things, in: Appadurai, Arjun (ed), The Social Life of Things, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 64-91.

Kuklick, Henrika (1991), Contested Monuments: The Politics of Archaeology in Southern Africa, in: Stocking, George (ed), Colonial Situations, Madison: University of Wisconsin, 135-169.

Lamont, Mark (2010), An Epidemic on Wheels? Road Safety, Public Health and Injury Politics in Africa, in: Anthropology Today, 26, 5, 3-7.

Lamont, Mark (2012), Accidents Have no Cure! Road Death as Industrial Catastrophe in Eastern Africa, in: African Studies, 71, 2, 174–194.

Lamont, Mark (2013), Speed Governors: Road Safety and Infrastructural Overload in Post-Colonial Kenia, 1963-2013, in: Africa, 83, 3, 367-384.

Lawuyi, Olatunde Bayo (1988), The World of the Yoruba Taxi Driver: An Interpretative Approach to Vehicle Slogans, in: Africa, 58, 1, 1–13.

Lee, Rebekah (2011), Death ‘On the Move’: Funerals, Entrepreneurs and the Rural-Urban Nexus in South Africa, in: Africa, 81, 2, 226–47.

Lee, Rebekah (2012), Death in Slow Motion: Funerals, Ritual Practice and Road Danger in South Africa, in: African Studies, 71, 2, 195-211.

Leiris, Michel (2007 [1934]), El África fantasmal [L’Afrique fântome], València: Pre-Textos.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1969 [1955]), Tristos tròpics [Tristes tropiques], Barcelona: Anagrama.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude (2000 [1971]), El hombre desnudo [L’homme nu], Madrid: Siglo XXI.

Lewis, Barbara (1970), The Transporters Association of the Ivory Coast: Ethnicity, Occupational Specialization, and National Integration, PhD Dissertation, Northwestern University.

Lewis, George H. (1998), The Philosophy of the Street in Ghana: Mammy Wagons and their Mottos, in: Journal of Popular Culture, 32, 1, 165–171.

Liebnow, Gus (1971), Colonial Rule and Political Development in Tanzania: The Case of the Makonde, Evanston, Northwestern University Press.

Lombard, Jérôme (2008), Enjeux privés dans le transport public d'Abidjan et de Dakar, in: Géocarrefour, 81, 167-174.

Lopes, Carlos (2009), Hug Me, Hold Me Tight! The Evolution of Passenger Transport in Luanda and Huambo (Angola), 1975-2000, in: Gewald, Jan-Bart, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (eds), The Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890-2000, Boston: Brill.

Lopes, Carlos (2011), Candongueiros & Kupatatas, Cascais: Principia.

Luning, Sabine (2009), A Chief’s Fatal Car Accident: Political History and Moral Geography in Burkina Faso, in: Gewald, Jan-Bart, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (eds), The Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890-2000, Boston: Brill.

Luzón, José Luis (1988), Urbanismo planificado y urbanización marginal en África Occidental, in: Revista de Geografia, 21-22, 49-65.

Lyon, Fergus (2007), Institutional Perspectives on Understanding Street Retailer Behavior and Networks: Cases from Ghana, in: Cross, John, and Alfonso Morales (eds), Street Entrepreneurs: People, Place & Politics in Local and Global Perspective, London: Routledge.

Malet, Daniel (2011), ‘Las apropiaciones socioespaciales del sistema hiace en el mercado de Sucupira de Praia’, paper presented at the 12th Meeting of the Spanish Federation of Anthropology Associations (FAAEE), León, September 6-9.

Masquelier, Adeline (1992), Encounter with a Road Siren: Machines, Bodies and Commodities in the Imagination of a Mawri Healer, in: Visual Anthropology Review, 8, 1, 56-69.

Masquelier, Adeline (2002), Road Mythographies: Space, Mobility and the Historical Imagination in Postcolonial Niger, in: American Ethnologist, 29, 4, 829-856.

Melnick, Amiel (2010), ‘Road Carnage: Risk and the Accident in Kenya’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Annual Meeting.

Miller, Daniel (ed) (2001), Car Cultures, Oxford: Berg.

Munguti, Kaendi J. (1997), Health Last: The Paradox of ‘Jua Kali’ Enterprises in Kenya, in: Kenya Journal of Sciences, 4, 1, 44-60.

Mutongi, Kenda (2006), Thugs or Entrepreneurs: Perceptions of Matatu Operators in Nairobi, 1970 to the Present, Africa, 76, 4, 549–568.

Mwanzia, Mutinda, and David Nzia (2009), ‘Agony of Kibaki Crash Families’, in: Standard Digital, June 6.

Nielsen, Morten (2012), Roadside Interventions: Making Time and Money Work at a Road Construction Site in Mozambique, in: Mobilities, 7, 4, 467–480.

Ntewusu, Samuel A. (2011), A Socio-Economic History of Northern Traders and Transporters in Accra’s Tudu: 1908–2008, PhD Dissertation, Leiden University.

Okpala, D.C.I. (1980), Traffic Consideration in Urban Expansion: Reviewing the Enugu Town Plan, in: Nigerian Geographical Journal, 23, 1, 2: 83-97.

Peace, Adrian (1988), The Politics of Transporting, in: Africa, 58, 1, 14-28.

Peacock, James L. (2001 [1986]), La lente antropológica, Madrid: Alianza.

Pirie, Gordon (1990), Race, Class and Comfort on Rural Buses, 1925-1955, in: Contree, 27, 5-11.

Pirie, Gordon (2011), Non-Urban Motoring in Colonial Africa in the 1920s and 1930s, in South African Historical Journal, 63, 1, 38-60.

Pirie, Gordon (2013), Automobile Organisations Driving Tourism in Pre-Independence Africa, in: Journal of Tourism History, 5, 1, 1-19.

Porter, Gina (2012), Reflections on a Century of Road Transport Developments in West Africa and their (Gendered) Impacts on Rural Poor, in: EchoGéo [online], 20 (http://echogeo.revues.org/13116; retrieved : December 15, 2014).

Poutier, R. (1990), Transports et développement au Zaire, in: Afrique Contemporaine, 153, 3-26.

Rabinow, Paul (1992 [1977]), Reflexiones sobre un trabajo de campo en Marruecos, Gijón: Júcar.

Ramos, Manuel Joao (2010), Histórias etíopes, Lisboa: Tinta da China.

Retaillé, Denis (dir), (2006) La ville ou l'État?, Rouen: Université de Rouen.

Rizzo, Matteo (2002), Being Taken for a Ride: Privatisation of the Dar es Salaam Transport System, 1983–1998, in: The Journal of Modern African Studies, 40, 1, 133-157.

Sanders, Todd (2008), Buses in Bongolan: Seductive Analytics and the Occult, in: Anthropological Theory, 8, 2, 107-132.

Shostak, Marjorie (1990 [1981]), Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, London: Earthscan Publications.

Silverstein, Stella (1983), Sociocultural Organization and Locational Strategies of Transportation Entrepreneurs: An Ethnoeconomic History of the Nnewi Igbo of Nigeria, PhD Dissertation, Boston University Graduate School.

Slyomovics, Susan (2010), Clifford Geertz in Morocco, London: Routledge.

Smeed, R. J. (1974), The Frequency of Road Accidents, Zeitschift fur Verkehrssichrheit, 20, 2-3, 95-107 and 51-59.

Soengas, Beatriz (2009), Preliminary Ethnographic Research on the Bakoya in Gabon, in: African Study Monographs, 30, 4, 187-208.

Stasik, Michael (2013), In the Hustle Park: The Social Organisation of Disorder in a West African Travel Hub, in: Working Papers of the DFG Priority Programme 1448 (1). Halle and Leipzig.

Stoller, Paul (1989), The taste of ethnagraphic things. Filadelfia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Thomas, Philip (2002), The River, the Road, and the Rural-Urban Divide: A Postcolonial Moral Geography from Southeast Madagascar, in: American Ethnologist, 29, 2, 366-391.

van Walraven, Klaas (2009), Vehicle of Sedition: The Role of Transport Workers in Sawaba’s Rebellion in Niger, 1954-1966, in: Gewald, Jan-Bart, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (eds) (2009), The Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890-2000, Boston: Brill.

Verrips, Jojada, and Birgit Meyer (2001), Kwaku’s Car: The Struggles and Stories of a Ghanaian Long-Distance Taxi-Driver, in: Miller, Daniel (ed), Car Cultures, Oxford: Berg, 153-184.

Wa Mungai, Mbugua and David A. Samper (2006), ‘No Mercy, no Remorse’: Personal Experience Narratives about Public Passenger Transportation in Nairobi, Kenya, in: Africa Today, 52, 3, 51–81.

Wainaina, James (1981), The ‘parking boys’ of Nairobi, in: African Journal of Sociology, 1, 2, 7-45.

Ward, Colin (1994), Freedom to Go: After the Motor Age, in: Ward, Colin, Agustín García Calvo and Antonio Estevan (1996), Contra el automóvil, Barcelona: Virus.

White, Luise (1997), Cars out of Place: Vampires, Technology, and Labor in East and Central Africa, in: Cooper, Frederick, and Ann Laura Stoller (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 436-460.

Wrangham, Elisabeth (2004), An African Road Revolution: The Gold Coast in the Period of the Great War, in: The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 32, 1, 1–18.

---

Notes

 

1. This article is the result of a research on the social universe of the Hiace vans in Cape Verde and how they relate to urban planning, mobility and the anthropology of traffic itself (Horta/Malet, 2014). Field work was undertaken during the autumns of 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2015.

 

2. For an analysis of the wide set of social phenomena which transportation encompasses, see: Ward (1996: 52).

 

3. Previously, the 1923 “Citröen Mission” had crossed the Sahara (Touggourt-Timbuktu) in 21 days. The cars, the wheels of which were reinforced with chains, covered the 1,100 km stretch between In Salah and Tin Zeuaten. In 1924, three cars from the Renault company travelled from Bechar to Burem, by the river Niger, in six days (Costa Morata, 1978: 94-95).

 

4. Their survey is almost systematically limited to the literature written in English. This practice applies to most publications in the Anglosaxon context. The Francophone literature shows the same endocentrism.

 

5. For an analysis of the motor vehicle in Africa as a generic symbol of colonisation, see: White (1997) and Alber (1998). There were no cars in the Sahara until 1916, but in 1920 there was already a remarkable number of cars in Tamanrasset, which played a vital role in the military subjugation of the population in the Hoggar (Costa Morata, 1978: 94).

 

6. The first major racing championship in Africa –the Méditerranée-Le Cap rally (16,000 km from North to South)– took place from 1950 up to 1961. From 1953 onwards, several rallies took place as legs of the world championship: Coronation Safari, Safari, Morocco and Ivory Coast.

 

7. For a first approach to Angola: Lopes (2009 and 2011); Algeria: Boesen/Marfaing (dirs.) (2007); Benin: Beauving (2004); Burkina Faso: Luning (2009); Cape Verde: Grassi (2003), Dias Furtado (2007), Malet (2011), Horta (2010 and 2013) and Horta/Malet (2014); Ivory Coast: Luzón (1988) and Wrangham (2004); Ethiopia: Ramos (2010) and Alem (2013); Gabon: Soengas (2009); Ghana: Field (1960), Dickson (1961), Date-Bah (1980), Geest (1989 and 2009), Grieco et alii (1996), Akurang (2001), Verrips/Meyer (2001), Lyon (2007), Asiedu/Agiey (2008), Chalfin (2008 and 2010), Klaeger (2009, 2012a, 2012b and 2013), Hart (2011), Ntewusu (2011), Porter (2012) and Stasik (2013); Kenya: Wainaina (1981), Munguti (1997), Chitere (2004), Kimani (2004), Carrier (2005), Mungai/Samper (2006), Mutongi (2006), Melnick (2010), Ference (2011), Chavis (2012) and Lamont (2012 y 2013); Madagascar: Cole (1998) and Thomas (2002); Mali: Fiori (2010); Mauritania: Godard (2002), Retaillé (dir.) (2006), Chenal/Pedrazzini/Vollmer (2009), Chenal/Kaufmann/Cisse/Pedrazzini (2009a and 2009b), Choplin (2009) and Alfonso/Nucci (2011); Mozambique: Chilundo (1992 and 1995), Agadjanian (2002) and Nielsen (2012); Namibia: Gewald (2002); Niger: Masquelier (1992 and 2002) and Chilson (1999); Nigeria: Hannerz (1979), Okpala (1980), Berry (1983 and 1985), Afejuku (1988), Lawuyi (1988), Peace (1988), Masquelier (1992 and 2002), Fourchard/Olawalle (dirs.) (2003) and Porter (2012); Senegal: Bredeloup/Bertoncello/Lombard (eds.) (2008), Lombard (2008), Chenal (2009) and Green-Simms (2009); South Africa: Lee (2011 and 2012); Tanzania: Liebnow (1981), Banyikwa (1988) and Rizzo (2002); Zaire: Poutier (1990); Zambia: Hansen/Vaa (eds.) (2004), Hansen (2010) and Kalikiti (2010); Central Africa in general: Fairhead (1993), Giles-Vernick (1996), Fourchard/Olawalle (dirs.) 2003), Hansen (2010), Simone (2004), Coquery (ed.) (2005), Elouga/Nga Ndongo/Mebenga Tamba (eds.) and Freed (2006), Diaz Olver et alii (2008 and 2010) and Dia Mwembu (2009).

 

8. Evoking the centrality of the canoe among the Trobrianders studied by Bronislaw Malinowski, Geest (2009: 258-259) highlights that, following the same logic that signifies it (object of desire and beauty, aimed at the domination of nature, decorated, and an inspiration for stories and ballads), the car would be the means of transportation that would occupy centrality in Ghana (and maybe all over the world), claiming the “honour” (we would add) of rising as the central object of the representations of the global culture (Miller, 2001).

 

9. As examples of this kind of approach, he mentions the ethnography by Masquelier (2002) in the Niger’s Route 1  and several articles of a special issue of the journal Theory, Culture and Society (2004, 21 [4-5]).

 

10. Verrips/Meyer study the interurban taxis in Ghana –which are called tro-tro and act as minivan or minihiace– by following the existential trajectory of a driver named Kwaku, in which we will recognise some parallel features with the social universe of the Hiace vans in Cape Verde: the little police monitoring of road transportation, the symbolisation of the vehicle by means, for example, of the slogans written on its front and rear parts, the social respectability of the business, the mechanical problems of the vehicle, the “lack of sophistication” widespread amongst the repair shops, or the aspiration of many young men to work as drivers because of the social status that this implies.