New Books in Anthropology

Laurian R. Bowles, "Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)


Listen Later

Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) explores the experiences of women porters, called kayayei, in Accra, Ghana. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork, anthropologist Laurian R. Bowles shows how kayayei navigate precarity, bringing into sharp relief how racialization, rooted in histories of colonialism and enslavement, undergirds capital accumulation in Ghana.

Bowles's ethnographic storytelling follows these women through their work as human transporters at Ghanaian markets. In creatively reappropriating public spaces as private sanctuaries, and in reimagining expected social relations through the cultivation of liberatory same-sex intimacies, kayayei develop ways to cope with the demands of their arduous labor while refusing narratives of victimhood projected on African women. Bowles's analysis of the emotional labor of the gig economy in Africa shows how the infrastructure anxieties of a modernizing city intersect with the complexities of blackness in a racially homogeneous nation, uncovering how antiblackness emerges in everyday public discourse, development agendas, and privately expressed anxieties about labor, gender, and sexual politics in Accra. Illustrating how race, sexuality, and gender manifest in daily life, Bowles centers kayayei, often perceived to be obstacles to progress and modernity, at the forefront for understanding urban Ghana's aspirations and anxieties about what it means to be a modern African country.

Grounded in African feminist theory and Black feminist ethnography, Headstrong uses women's narratives as the central analytic for understanding the look and feel of modernity in Accra, challenging long-standing notions of gender, race, and desire in Africa.


Laurian Bowles is the Vann Professor of Racial Justice and Associate Professor & Chair of the Anthropology Department at Davidson College.

Jessie Cohen earned her Ph.D. in African History from Columbia University and is Assistant Editor at the New Books Network

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

New Books in AnthropologyBy New Books Network

  • 4.2
  • 4.2
  • 4.2
  • 4.2
  • 4.2

4.2

50 ratings


More shows like New Books in Anthropology

View all
In Our Time by BBC Radio 4

In Our Time

5,461 Listeners

Science In Action by BBC World Service

Science In Action

350 Listeners

New Books in History by Marshall Poe

New Books in History

209 Listeners

New Books in Psychoanalysis by Marshall Poe

New Books in Psychoanalysis

190 Listeners

New Books in Military History by Marshall Poe

New Books in Military History

161 Listeners

New Books in Economics by Marshall Poe

New Books in Economics

26 Listeners

New Books in African American Studies by New Books Network

New Books in African American Studies

164 Listeners

New Books in Environmental Studies by Marshall Poe

New Books in Environmental Studies

24 Listeners

New Books in Political Science by New Books Network

New Books in Political Science

63 Listeners

New Books in Philosophy by New Books Network

New Books in Philosophy

110 Listeners

New Books in Native American Studies by Marshall Poe

New Books in Native American Studies

104 Listeners

The LRB Podcast by The London Review of Books

The LRB Podcast

294 Listeners

The Audio Long Read by The Guardian

The Audio Long Read

843 Listeners

New Books in Critical Theory by Marshall Poe

New Books in Critical Theory

147 Listeners

New Books in Intellectual History by New Books Network

New Books in Intellectual History

61 Listeners

Jacobin Radio by Jacobin

Jacobin Radio

1,446 Listeners

The Gray Area with Sean Illing by Vox

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

10,691 Listeners

Philosophy For Our Times by IAI

Philosophy For Our Times

303 Listeners

The Good Fight by Yascha Mounk

The Good Fight

910 Listeners

Politics Theory Other by Politics Theory Other

Politics Theory Other

176 Listeners

Today in Focus by The Guardian

Today in Focus

995 Listeners

Ones and Tooze by Foreign  Policy

Ones and Tooze

348 Listeners

Politics Weekly America by The Guardian

Politics Weekly America

201 Listeners

Past Present Future by David Runciman

Past Present Future

319 Listeners