Papers by Alexis Malefakis
Visual Cultures in Africa, 2022
This chapter outlines a research approach practiced at the Ethnographic Museum at the University ... more This chapter outlines a research approach practiced at the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, that takes a new look at ethnographic col‐ lections. Regarding a research and exhibition project on wire models from Burundi, I introduce skill research to reformulate knowledge production in ethnographic museums.
City & Society, 2019
Although practices of mobile street vendors might appear fleeting, they are not transient and wit... more Although practices of mobile street vendors might appear fleeting, they are not transient and without effect on the urban landscape. The spatial practices of street vending transform public spaces into markets by inscribing the vendors' knowledge necessary to conduct business in the urban landscape. With reference to ethnographic material on mobile street vendors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I will show how street traders learned to locate the relevant social, material, and symbolic goods and people at specific nodes in the spatiotemporal dynamic of the city and jointly created an understanding of the relations of these elements to one another and to themselves. By means of a shared jargon vocabulary with which they named places, customer groups, or kinds of encounters, the vendors inscribed their experiential knowledge into urban space and thus transformed it into a market as an epistemic landscape, a layer of meaning and knowledge that spanned the spatiotemporal topography of the city and allowed the vendors to organize their practices. The concept of the epistemic landscape refers to the structuring potential of recursive spatial practices and emphasizes the socially and culturally creative potential of street vending.
Kulturen des Reparierens Dinge – Wissen – Praktiken. Stefan Krebs / Gabriele Schabacher / Heike Weber (Hg.) Transcript Verlag. , 2018
In Daressalam, Tansania, sind gebrauchte Schuhe aus Europa, den USA und Asien bei vielen Konsumen... more In Daressalam, Tansania, sind gebrauchte Schuhe aus Europa, den USA und Asien bei vielen Konsumenten beliebt. Tausende von Händlern auf den Märkten und Straßen der Stadt leben vom Verkauf der Secondhand-Ware, die zum Großteil aus den Altkleidersammlungen der reicheren Industrienationen stammt. Doch bevor sie den Kunden auf den Straßen angeboten werden können, müssen die Schuhe gewaschen, repariert und aufpoliert werden. Eine Gruppe von männlichen Schuhhändlern, mit der ich zwischen 2011 und 2013 fünfzehn Monate gearbeitet und geforscht habe, hatte sich für diese Arbeit in einem Hinterhof der Innenstadt ihren kijiweni, ihren Treffpunkt und Arbeitsplatz eingerichtet. Bei ihrer Kundschaft war die gebrauchte Ware oft beliebter als neue Schuhe, die häufig aus China importiert waren und im Ruf standen, zwar günstig, aber von minderer Qualität zu sein. Wenn die Schuhhändler im Hinterhof die alten Schuhe also wuschen, reparierten und aufpolierten, taten sie das nicht, um die Gebrauchsspuren zu vertuschen. Im Gegenteil: Gebrauchsspuren und die Spuren ihrer Reparaturarbeiten an den Schuhen wurden als Zeichen ihrer Herkunft und Qualität belassen und in manchen Fällen sogar betont oder vorgetäuscht. Denn, so erklärte mir einer der Schuhhändler: »Was bei euch in Europa alt ist, ist hier noch neu.«
Africa, 2018
Read full paper here:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972017001140
Fieldwork is sometimes marked by experiences of frictions and frustration. Fieldwork with mobile ... more Fieldwork is sometimes marked by experiences of frictions and frustration. Fieldwork with mobile street vendorsi na nA frican city may confront the fieldworker with the problem of locating the 'field' and attaining access to it, both spatially and temporally.A sIwill show by reference to my fieldwork with ag roup of shoe vendors on the streets of Dar es Salaam, Ta nzania, the frictions that occurred at the beginning of my fieldwork nevertheless ignited aprocess of ethnographic knowledge-gaining that led me to understand the importance of temporality and rhythmicity for the shoe vendors' practices. In their active engagement with the spatio-temporal landscape of the city,the street vendors organisedt heir practices as an experiential rhythm that unfolded as sequences of rising and subsequently declining cognitive and corporeal tensions. These rhythms did not flow smoothly,b ut were necessarily interspersed with disturbancesa nd frictions by the rhythms of other pedestrians in the streets, whose attention thestreet vendorstried to attain.
Books by Alexis Malefakis
An in-depth study of street trading in Dar es Salaam, revealing the hidden dimensions of the city... more An in-depth study of street trading in Dar es Salaam, revealing the hidden dimensions of the city’s thriving informal economy.
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.
Publication Date: 15 April 2019
192 pages
Product ISBNs: Hardback: 9781786994509
eBook ePub: 9781786994530
eBook Kindle: 9781786994547
Our old shoes start a new life in Africa. While many people in Europe think their donated clothes... more Our old shoes start a new life in Africa. While many people in Europe think their donated clothes and shoes are given to the needy in the «Third World», trade in used clothes and shoes really is a worldwide business. Besides commercial collectors, sorting plants and intermediary traders thousands of street vendors in Africa live on re-selling used clothes and shoes. The book gives ethnographic insights into the lifeworld of a group of street vendors in the Tanzanian metropolis of Dar es Salaam who live on selling used shoes. They fled from the poverty of their home villages to seek better life in Dar es Salaam. As street vendors they became experts of the city: Their success depends on their ability to transform a fleeting encounter in the streets into an opportunity to sell. With contributions by Christa Luginbühl on the global aspects of shoe production and Tabea Grob on the worldwide trade in secondhand clothes.
Mareile Flitsch (ed.) Alexis Malefakis, Tabea Grob, Christa Luginbühl
2016 Benteli Verlag, Zürich, a bnb media gmbh trademark, and Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zürich
112 pages
25.5 x 17 cm
hardcover
CHF 34.90, EUR
In the 1970s and 1980s young model makers in Burundi created original miniature replicas of racin... more In the 1970s and 1980s young model makers in Burundi created original miniature replicas of racing cars, motorcycles, planes and helicopters from wire, tin and plastic. Yet their models are more than just 'toys' or 'recycled art': as autodidacts they learnt to translate the design idiom of vehicles and brands into their own medium, finding innovative solutions to the technical challenges of model making.
Alexis Malefakis, mit Beiträgen von Reto Togni und Thomas Laely (ed. Mareile Flitsch): Auto Didaktika - Drahtmodelle aus Burundi / Wire models from Burundi. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart und Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich 2017, 128 Seiten,
ISBN 978-3-89790-492-7
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Papers by Alexis Malefakis
Books by Alexis Malefakis
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.
Publication Date: 15 April 2019
192 pages
Product ISBNs: Hardback: 9781786994509
eBook ePub: 9781786994530
eBook Kindle: 9781786994547
Mareile Flitsch (ed.) Alexis Malefakis, Tabea Grob, Christa Luginbühl
2016 Benteli Verlag, Zürich, a bnb media gmbh trademark, and Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zürich
112 pages
25.5 x 17 cm
hardcover
CHF 34.90, EUR
Alexis Malefakis, mit Beiträgen von Reto Togni und Thomas Laely (ed. Mareile Flitsch): Auto Didaktika - Drahtmodelle aus Burundi / Wire models from Burundi. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart und Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich 2017, 128 Seiten,
ISBN 978-3-89790-492-7
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.
Publication Date: 15 April 2019
192 pages
Product ISBNs: Hardback: 9781786994509
eBook ePub: 9781786994530
eBook Kindle: 9781786994547
Mareile Flitsch (ed.) Alexis Malefakis, Tabea Grob, Christa Luginbühl
2016 Benteli Verlag, Zürich, a bnb media gmbh trademark, and Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zürich
112 pages
25.5 x 17 cm
hardcover
CHF 34.90, EUR
Alexis Malefakis, mit Beiträgen von Reto Togni und Thomas Laely (ed. Mareile Flitsch): Auto Didaktika - Drahtmodelle aus Burundi / Wire models from Burundi. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart und Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich 2017, 128 Seiten,
ISBN 978-3-89790-492-7