The market places and street corners of Dar es Salaam are home to a thriving informal economy of street vendors selling secondhand clothing and other goods. These street vendors often live a precarious existence, under pressure from state authorities and international markets. In addition to these external pressures, the experiences of such vendors are also shaped by a complex interplay of internal tensions, rivalries and conflicting communal ties. Such internal dynamics are a common part of informal economies around the world, but have largely gone unrecognised and unexamined by academic scholarship. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and extensive interviews with vendors living and working in Dar es Salaam, Malefakis's book offers a nuanced portrait of those trying to carve out a livelihood in a major African city, one in which ties of kinship and ethnicity are often viewed as a barrier, rather than an aid, to success. In the process, Malefakis provides an invaluable new perspective on the way in which co-operation, or lack thereof, functions in an informal economy, as well as insight into the lived experiences of those who depend on such economies.

The unique wire model collection of the Swiss collector Edmond Remondino documents an early phase of a craft that today enjoys international renown with collectors and researchers. In the 1970s and 1980s the models evolved from real prototypes such as race cars from the Rally du Burundi; today, as then, the extraordinary aesthetic, alternating between minimalism and comic-type exaggeration, captures the imagination. However, these cars, planes and helicopters, often referred to as 'recycled art', are in no way assembled from rubbish. In Burundi old tin cans and metal wire are considered an important basic material in handicraft. Interdisciplinary essays discuss the works of the self-taught working engineers in terms of their skillful production and the history of Burundi as well as from an industrial design viewpoint, showing completely new aspects of a genre of African art that is now more than forty years old. Text in English and German.

The market places and street corners of Dar es Salaam are home to a thriving informal economy of street vendors selling secondhand clothing and other goods. These street vendors often live a precarious existence, under pressure from state authorities and international markets. In addition to these external pressures, the experiences of such vendors are also shaped by a complex interplay of internal tensions, rivalries and conflicting communal ties. Such internal dynamics are a common part of informal economies around the world, but have largely gone unrecognised and unexamined by academic scholarship. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and extensive interviews with vendors living and working in Dar es Salaam, Malefakis's book offers a nuanced portrait of those trying to carve out a livelihood in a major African city, one in which ties of kinship and ethnicity are often viewed as a barrier, rather than an aid, to success. In the process, Malefakis provides an invaluable new perspective on the way in which co-operation, or lack thereof, functions in an informal economy, as well as insight into the lived experiences of those who depend on such economies.