Motorbike People

This book asks what power might be in other cultural contexts. What would social scientists gain -- and what would they lose – by abandoning the assumption that power is a universal feature of human social life? It poses these questions through an ethnographic account of the lives and livelihoods of motorcycle taxi drivers in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Tracing out the relationships that form Ikimotari, the motorcycle taxi business, in Kigali, the author shows that conventional accounts of power and resistance sit uneasily with the forms of personhood that inhabit this social context. From motorcyclists’ everyday dealings with the police and one another to the regulation of the sector at large, and the constitution of the Rwandan state, Ikimotari makes a case that other forms of personhood demand varied concepts of power. It argues that by allowing concepts of power to proliferate, social science the political capacity to engage in questions of justice or make common cause with the oppressed, but gains the ability to rethink the political and meet the challenges of a swiftly changing world.

Rollason cleverly uses the experiences of Kigali's motorcycle taxi drivers as a window for discussing broader issues of personhood, politics, and theory. This accessible and adventurous monograph demonstrates all the strength of the ethnographic method and deserves a wide readership.--Isak Niehaus, Brunel University London, and author of AIDS in the Shadow of Biomedicine: Inside South Africa's Epidemic

Will Rollason is senior lecturer of anthropology at Brunel University, London.