Everyday Crisis-Living in Contemporary Zimbabwe

This book examines the everyday lives of ordinary Zimbabweans in the context of national crises in post-2000 Zimbabwe.Throughout the literature of Zimbabwean studies, a consideration of everyday lives has been limited to informal trading and rarely applied as an analytical framework, despite the importance of understanding crisis-living with reference to the specific character of national crises across the African continent. This edited volume is one of the first in its field to theorise everyday Zimbabwean lives within the context of crisis, with three central themes addressed: urban and rural lives; men, women and HIV; and along and beyond the border. Chapters incorporate topics from child marriage and sexual practices, to climate change and social accountability, encompassing a shift in focus from macro-structures to how farm labourers, students, child-brides and other ordinary people negotiate gender, class and social dynamics within a dominant order. The introductory chapter offers an innovative analytical framing for the empirical chapters which follow, each providing micro-studies based on original qualitative fieldwork by early-career Zimbabwean scholars. Everyday Crisis-Living in Contemporary Zimbabwe will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, anthropology and African Studies more broadly.

Kirk Helliker is Research Professor and Head of the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University, South Africa. He supervises a large number of Zimbabwean PhD students, and publishes primarily on livelihoods, land struggles and civil society in Zimbabwe. Dr. Sandra Bhatasara is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of Zimbabwe and Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University. Her research focuses on intersectional studies of gender, agrarian issues, environment and social dimensions of climate change. Manase Kudzai Chiweshe is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of Zimbabwe. He is also Research Associate, Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, South Africa. His research resolves around everyday life in African spaces.