The Conclusion recaps the conceptual themes of the book, emphasising the need for scholars to renew their focus upon the intertwined nature of kinship, class, and capital not only in the empirical study of capitalism on the African continent, but in anthropology where the study of kinship has veered away from questions of inheritance and property since the 1980s, a subject to which it is only now returning. It recaptures the book’s emphasis on the erosion of moral economies under conditions of land’s commodification, and the way this shapes the pauperisation of junior kin.

Chapter 2 turns towards the neighbourhood of Ituura. It introduces my field site in detail by exploring cases of local youth who are said to have been ‘wasted’ by alcoholism. In contrast to those who are said to have ‘given up’ on their futures, other young men are shown to embrace discourses of moral fortitude to sustain their hopes for the future while working for low, piecemeal wages in the informal economy. Such youth claim that one must be ‘bold to make it’. Engaging with anthropological discussion on waithood and hope, the chapter shows how young men cultivate moral fortitude through an ethics of endurance – a hope for hope itself, a way of sustaining belief in their own long-term futures that involves economising practices, prayer, and avoidance of one’s peers who are seen to be a source of temptation and pressure to consume.

Chapter 1 introduces the region of Kiambu in detail, establishing the stakes of moral debate over wealth amongst men in the region. While an older generation preaches the labour ideology (the notion that hard work will bring success) that allowed them to prosper in the aftermath of independence, it has been undermined by dwindling land holdings and opportunities for ‘off-farm income’, creating a crisis of hopelessness as young men wonder if they will ever reach the ‘level’ of their elders. Framing the study of masculine destitution to follow, the chapter discusses the legacies of the ‘Kenya Debate’, a regional debate in political economy about the relative prosperity of Kenya’s peasantry after independence. It argues for a processual, non-static approach to economic change in central Kenya, allowing us to see how class divides have been opened across generations due to population pressure on land. Its subdivision within families exerts stronger pressure on young family members who find themselves in the situation of being virtual paupers – land poor and ‘hustling’ for cash.

Chapter 4 turns towards the role of women’s work in reproducing the household, focusing on the labour of relation-making in the neighbourhood as a means of creating economic networks through which material assistance can be sought. Commenting on anthropological literature that frames African contexts as ones of ‘mutuality’ and ‘obligation’, the chapter discusses the difficulty of finding assistance for aspirational projects (especially school fees) in an atomised neighbourhood where families compete for the prestige of economic advancement. It remarks upon the possibilities and limits of caring labour as a means through which women enter into economic relations of mutual support with others.

This chapter analyses how poetry of the late nineteenth century were mythopoetic exercises which promoted a nativist labour poetics that typically subtended the primary conflict of settler colonialism. It analyses how the heroicisation of bush work in the 1870s was built upon in the late 1890s when economic depression and changes to labour conditions saw a tightened alignment between labour to values of citizenship, civilisation and moral virtue. While 1890s poetry depicted the material and psychological consequences of capitalism and economic depression, its advocacy for workers’ rights were racially bound and can be mapped onto events that led to the White Australia policy. The chapter also discusses the influence of correspondence with Walt Whitman in Bernard O’Dowd’s vision of radical nationalism, yet also how such vision was likewise racially limited.

This chapter argues that by any measure – mass conscription, full economic mobilization, blurring of civilians and combatants, blockades, sieges, scorched earth, murderous occupation, unfree labour, and state control – the Soviet Union was involved in ‘Total War’. The Soviet state set a new benchmark in its exhaustive mobilization of resources, including human labour. The government, reaching the height of its power, achieved a mobilization of resources for the front so complete that the home front population was close to collapse by the war’s end. Covering the period from the invasion in 1941 to the end of the war, the chapter examines the mass evacuation of people, industry, and herds in the face of invasion; the rationing system and supplementary food policies; compulsory labour mobilization of free citizens and prisoners; labour laws and repression; propaganda and popular support; and the liberation of the occupied territories. It examines the deep sacrifices made by ordinary people in terms of consumption, living and working conditions, and daily life in order to provision the front.

The uterus acts as a receptacle providing the home for the growing fetus from conception to the time of delivery. Globally most women deliver vaginally. The mechanism of onset of labour is still a speculation. Current theory is that hormonal change brought about by the hypothalamopituitary axis lowers progesterone, which is a muscle relaxant. This is followed by local changes in the chorioamnion that result in the production of prostaglandins, which cause softening and effacement of the cervix and uterine contractions that are key elements for the onset and progress of labour. Absent mechanical difficulties, uterine contractions bring about the process of cervical dilatation and descent of the head, resulting in spontaneous expulsion of the fetus, placenta and membranes. The main reasons for slow progress are inefficient uterine contractions (P-power), relative disproportion due to malposition, or cephalopelvic disproportion either due to a large baby and head (P-passenger) or a relatively small or non-gynaecoid pelvis (P-passage). These three Ps influence labour outcome.

Labour or parturition is a physiologic process culminating in expulsion of fetus, amniotic fluid, placenta and membranes from the gravid uterus of a pregnant woman involving sequential and integrated changes in the myometrium, decidua and cervix. In a woman with a regular 28-day cycle, labour is said to take place 280 days after the onset of the last menstrual period. However, the length of human gestation varies considerably among healthy pregnancies, even when ovulation is accurately measured in naturally conceiving women. Initiation of labour may be best regarded as a withdrawal of the inhibitory effects of pregnancy on the tissue of the uterus, rather than as an active process mediated by the release of uterine stimulants. Successful labour passes through three stages: the shortening and dilatation of the cervix; descent and birth of the fetus; and the expulsion of the placenta and membranes. Efficient uterine contractions (power), an adequate roomy pelvis (passage) and an appropriate fetal size (passenger) are key factors in this process.

Preterm birth (PTB) is the leading cause of perinatal mortality and morbidity. The long-term health problems associated with PTB are significant. Despite many strategies to identify and treat preterm birth and labour, there remains slow progress in reducing the rates of PTBs. The causes of PTBs are multifactorial. There needs to be a good and coordinated approach to the identification of risk factors, screening strategies and appropriate interventions to have any impact on reducing the rates of PTBs worldwide. Currently, there is no single diagnostic test that should be used exclusively to direct management in the setting of threatened preterm labour. Tests to stratify risks of PTB include biochemical markers such as fetal fibronectin and transvaginal ultrasound of cervical length. Common interventions for preterm labour include tocolysis, antenatal corticosteroids and magnesium sulphate for neuroprotection. This chapter analyses the causes and risk factors for PTB, screening strategies and preventative initiatives to prevent PTB, and reviews the evidence and current guidelines in the screening and prevention of PTB.

Chapter 5 discusses the economic structure of a rational state. Anticipating Marx’s critique of capitalism, Hegel associates the maximization of self-interest promoted by the modern market to an inconsistent and ultimately irrational conception of freedom. He argues that the elevation of freedom to a rational form requires not merely a readjustment of the economic sphere, but a change of paradigm, and this change is entrusted to a system of professional corporations in which competition is replaced by cooperation and trust. Yet although these groups can help mitigate capitalism’s worst excesses, they are not up to the conceptual role Hegel wants them to play. This does not mean, however, that his associative strategy cannot be successfully revived. The chapter’s final section shows that a rational economic sphere implies not only the common ownership of society’s productive resources, but also the democratization of the productive sphere. Drawing on the market socialist tradition, it is suggested that the corporations can be fruitfully reconstructed as worker-directed enterprises, capable of recapturing their communal spirit while avoiding their main limitations.

This chapter describes material and immaterial labour in the context of the industrial production, resource extraction, and global circulation of the silvery-alkali metal known as lithium. It focuses on the different kinds of material labour involved in lithium’s extraction from local sites in and around the Atacama Desert in Latin America, as well as less visible forms of labour underpinning the mining industry, including the labour of social reproduction and colonial dispossession. In this context, it asks: how do narrative arts document the violence of lithium’s extraction as it materialises in damaged and dispossessed bodies and environments, as well as those less visible traces of lithium’s circulation around the world, and the different affective economies it inhabits? I suggest that a contradiction or tension between materiality and immateriality, between what is seen and unseen, defines every level of lithium’s transformation into a commodity, as registered within global networks of labour. These larger systems, I argue, are rendered invisible; just as lithium silently provides the charge for iPhone and Tesla, it is a vanishing mediator to what some thinkers have described as ‘new extractive imperialism’. This, however, becomes visible—precisely as a kind of ideological dissimulation—across a whole range of narrative forms.

Conclusion: The book ends by reflecting on the boundaries of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in the context of maritime writing and the range of texts that render the different forms of lived experience associated with seafaring. It restates the book’s focus on the everyday global sea of the long nineteenth century that shaped the lives, labour practices, and imaginative worlds of working-class individuals and their families.