Yet another innovative and exciting title published by Duke University Press, anthropologist Michael Degani’s new work, The City Electric: Infrastructure and Ingenuity in Postsocialist Tanzania is the latest book we have indexed at Southwest Humanities. This deeply researched study critically examines the effects of neoliberal reforms on the power supply in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania over the last two decades. While the pace of technology innovation (computers, cell phones, refrigerators, etc.) and corresponding new power needs has only increased, electricity in Tanzania is still produced and distributed by the bureaucracy-heavy national power firm Tanesco, which began in the socialist era. Degani also explores how some power consumers seek off-grid or less-than-legal solutions to power difficulties, often with the assistance of freelance electricians or current and former utility company employees. The City Electric investigates the various ways that “electricity and its piracy has become a key site for urban Tanzanians to enact, experience, and debate their social contract with the state,” and “reveals the logics of infrastructural modification and their effects on everyday life.” For more information about Degani’s book, which will be published in November 2022, please visit the Duke University Press page for it here.
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