Janet MacGaffey, Professor of Anthropology at Bucknell University, is author of Entrepreneurs and Parasites
and coauthor of The Real Economy of Zaire.
Bazenguissa-Ganga, Remy : Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale
Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga teaches at the Centre d'Études Africaines, École des Hautes Études
en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and is author of Les Voies du politique au Congo: Essai de sociologie historique.
Summary
Congo-Paris investigates the transnational trade between Central Africa and Europe by focusing on the
lives of individual traders from Kinshasa and Brazzaville who operate across national frontiers and often outside
the law. Challenging the boundaries of traditional anthropology, Janet MacGaffey and Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga
follow complex international networks to examine the ways in which the African second economy has been extended
transnationally and globally on the margins of the law. Who are these traders? What strategies do they have, not
only to survive but to shine? What kinds of networks do they rely on? What implications does their trade have for
the study of globalization? The personal networks of ethnicity, kinship, religion, and friendship constructed by
the traders fashion a world of their own. From Johannesburg to Cairo and from Dakar to Nairobi as well as in Paris,
the Congolese traders are renowned and envied. This lively book shows that it is not just the multinationals who
benefit from jets and mobile phones.
