DR Matteo Rizzo mr3@soas.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer in Development Studies
Taken For A Ride: Grounding Neoliberalism, Precarious Labour, and Public Transport in an African Metropolis
Rizzo, Matteo
Authors
Abstract
The growth of cities and informal economies are two central manifestations of globalization in the developing world. Taken for a Ride addresses both, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and charting its public transport system’s journey from public to private provision. The book investigates this shift alongside the increasing deregulation of the sector and the resulting chaotic modality of public transport. It reviews state attempts to regain control over public transport, the political motivations behind these, and their inability to address its problems. The analysis documents how informal wage relations prevailed in the sector, and how their salience explains many of the inefficiencies of public transport. The changing political attitude of workers towards employers and the state is investigated: from an initial incapacity to respond to exploitation, to political organization and unionization, which won workers concessions on labour rights. A longitudinal study of workers throws light on patterns of occupational mobility in the sector. The book ends with an analysis of the political and economic interests that shaped the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit in Dar es Salaam and local resistance to it. Taken for a Ride is an interdisciplinary political economy of public transport, exposing the limitations of market fundamentalist and postcolonial scholarship on economic informality and the urban experience in developing countries, and its failure to locate the agency of the urban poor within their economic and political structures. It is both a contribution to and a call for the contextualized study of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’.
Citation
Rizzo, M. (2017). Taken For A Ride: Grounding Neoliberalism, Precarious Labour, and Public Transport in an African Metropolis. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794240.001.0001
Book Type | Authored Book |
---|---|
Publication Date | Jun 1, 2017 |
Deposit Date | Jul 5, 2017 |
Publicly Available Date | Sep 3, 2020 |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Series Title | Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research, and Policy in International Development Studies |
ISBN | 9780198794240 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794240.001.0001 |
Publisher URL | https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198794240.001.0001/oso-9780198794240 |
Files
Pages from 24320.pdf
(553 Kb)
PDF
Version
Chapter 1
You might also like
The Groundnut Scheme and Colonial Development in Tanganyika
(2022)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About SOAS Research Online
Administrator e-mail: outputs@soas.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2025
Advanced Search