Acknowledgments

This book has been in the making for many years, and its completion marks a particular juncture along a series of journeys that have coalesced over time: journeys of research and professional trajectory; journeys of friendships made during and through research and “at work”; journeys of love, partnership, and motherhood. All of these have both interrupted different stages of the book writing and animated it continuously. There are so many people to thank. My attempt to do so here does not adequately reflect the depth of my gratitude to the vast web of friendships, mentorship, collaboration, support, and inspiration I have benefited from over the years. In no particular order . . .

First, there are those to thank at the University of Minnesota Press: Pieter Martin for being so responsive from the start and encouraging me to send in a proposal, Globalization and Community series editor Susan Clarke for constant encouragement and reading multiple versions of my manuscript, Anne Carter for editorial support during the preproduction phase, and Rachel Moeller and the design team for working with me on the cover design; thanks also to Sheila McMahon for meticulous copyediting. I also want to thank Eric Lundgren from UMP and Lisa Trischler from the UCL Open Access Team, who made it possible for this book to become Open Access. This is my first book, and working with UMP has been a pleasure from start to finish. I feel very lucky.

Each stage of my academic training is reflected in some way in this book. My undergraduate professors at Cornell University in both the dance and anthropology departments encouraged me to question seemingly established norms and to explore with close attention the unstated, the overlooked, the in-betweens. My law and anthropology professors and fellow peers at the London School of Economics made me question what counts as a legal category. My professors and colleagues in the geography department at the University of Cambridge made me realize that geography can be an empirical and theoretical playground and the most welcoming of disciplines.

I am grateful to Stuart Hart and Erik Simanis from Cornell University for bringing me on board a team project that gave me the chance to go to Kenya for the first time in 2005 and for inviting me into the early days of “inclusive business” deliberations. It made me appreciate the importance of listening to perspectives from seemingly disparate sectors and disciplines and has made me consider the efforts of practitioners from all sectors that have continued to make strides and in some cases push for radical reimaginings of what counts as “value.”

The early stages of fieldwork were funded by an ESRC (Economic Social Research Council) Case Studentship award (2008–13), with SC Johnson as the institutional sponsor, thanks to John Langdell’s support and curiosity. Subsequent trips to Kenya in 2016–17 were funded by a British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) grant, which also allowed me to organize a workshop in 2017 that served as foundational for a special issue of Africa titled “Harnessing the Hustle.” I am grateful to Archipel&Co for funding the “Hip Hop Mtaani Hustle” study that informed chapter 7. I thank my PhD supervisor, Bhaskar Vira, for his calm and supportive presence throughout my PhD and during my first lectureship at the University of Cambridge and as a fellow at Fitzwilliam College. I am grateful to Bhaskar and to Fitzwilliam College for granting me access during a term in 2023 as a visiting fellow to the beautiful Fitz library, where I spent several Sunday afternoons writing during an otherwise busy teaching term. That library, the Fitz gardens, and the café provided a vital oasis for the final stages of writing and thinking.

I am grateful to Nairobi friends who started as interlocutors, “contacts,” and collaborators. There are so many people who have generously shared their time and stories with me. I’m sorry that I can’t mention everyone’s name here, but a special thank you to my oldest friends in Nairobi, Salim Mohamed, Sammy Gitau, and Joseph Njenga. Other friends welcomed me into their neighborhoods and homes: Eliza, Kennedy, Mambo, Kaka, Nathaniel, MANYGRO boys, especially Edwin, Wally, Mike, and Felix. I was lucky to meet Sam Mburu from Dandora Recyclers during my 2023 trip, and we’ve stayed in close contact ever since; the story of the “Dumpster Divas” is one that I look forward to following in the years to come. In Huruma, my thanks to Shei, Elias, Osodo, Kevo Uduny, Mama Diana, Oti, Oscar, and Humphrey. My thanks to Susan Kimani, the queen of social work done well and with passion, who reminded me that there are always things to be optimistic about. To Caro Odera, thank you for taking care of Zoë during fieldwork days that first year when she was so little, and for our friendship ever since. A few years into my fieldwork, I met Kahos, who would become a friend and a thinking buddy. Thank you for generously taking the time to write a response to the book. To Rosie, you are missed by so many of us. Thank you for your friendship, research collaboration between 2009 and 2011, and everything you did for youth in Nairobi. I hope that this book contributes to the archive of your life and legacy. Thanks to Rosie, I was fortunate to meet Pato Shomba and the Ghetto Films Trust crew in 2010, with whom two film collaborations ensued in 2010 and then in 2017. Thank you, Pato and David, especially for teaching me so much about the joys and labors of filming, for experimenting together to see what it could bring to ethnographic storytelling, and for your patient collaboration during the postproduction phase of those two projects. To the Nairobeez crew: thank you, Donga Man, Kissmart, and Moses for your brave and bold storytelling that has built a vital bridge between the local hood and wider audiences and for your honesty during difficult but important conversations. To my Swahili teacher, Mwalimu Judith Kiprop, thank you for all those hours of instruction during my first year of fieldwork, for giving me a love for the Swahili language and letting me appreciate both Swahili sanifu (proper Swahili) and its vernacular Sheng. I will continue to learn both in tandem and think of you with gratitude and humility. I have been inspired by the scholarship and activism of young Nairobi scholars, in particular, Wangui Kimari, Felix Mutunga Ndaka, Kamau Kairuri, and Mwangi Mwaura; there are many others. I thank Jackline Wanyonyi for research collaboration that fed into chapter 7 on hip-hop mtaani, Abu for research assistance on that fieldwork, and all the hip-hop artists who took part in those focus group discussions and shared their tracks and reflections: Micko Migra, Sanaa Centre, Pause n Play, and Flawless Konya.

There are numerous caring colleagues and friends who have at different stages asked about the book, commented on draft material, or simply offered encouragement, a listening ear, and a gentle push to keep going: Eszter Kovacs, Riam Kuyakanon Knapp, Kavita Ramakrishnan, Lizzie Richardson, Fabien Cante, James Cheshire, Rory Finnin, Ash Amin, Alan Latham, Tau Tavengwa, and many more. I thank Mary Lawhon for being a stellar critical friend and reviewer of the manuscript; thank you for the careful and generous reads and the virtual coffee conversations. We met a year before I really started writing in Newcastle 2022 at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) conference, and I’m so glad we have become friends since.

Thank you to others who have provided friendship, encouragement, and inspiring exchanges over the years, in the workplace, after the conference panel, at the park, or in the café: James Kneale, Tom Western, Ben Page, Jo Waters, Tariq Jazeel, Andrew Barry, Alan Latham, Pushpa Arabindoo, Jenny Robinson, Caz Bressey, Jason Dittmer, Claire Dwyer, Russell Hitchings, Mette Berg, Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Emma Mawdsley, Charlotte Lemanski, Maan Barua, Claire Mercer, Will Monteith, Liz Fouksman, Philippa Williams, Colin McFarlane, David Menasce, Laurence Fontaine, Chance Bleu Montgomery, Nicky Padfield, Ruth Armstrong, Amy Ludlow, Melora Koepke, Victoria Okoye, Alana Osborne, Anton Humphrey, Anne Lally, Sara Muse, and Michale Bouskila-Chubb. I am grateful to Edgar Pieterse, Maliq Simone, Suzi Hall, Ash Amin, and Ann Varley, who have at different moments provided invaluable mentorship and support, inspiring me with their own writing, thinking, and creative practice. A special thank you to my friend Michele Lancione, whose intellectual generosity and shared passion for urban ethnography enabled several writing opportunities that gave me space for creative and experimental writing and thinking.

I have learned so much from thinking (and in some cases writing) with friends also doing ethnographic fieldwork in Nairobi: Lynsey Farrell, Michele Osborn, and Naomi Van Stapele. A special thank you in particular to Meghan Ference, my dear friend and Nairobi fieldwork sister whom I met by chance at a seminar at the BIEA in Nairobi, back in 2009. I am grateful for our friendship and mutual support during those early days of fieldwork, subsequent job searches, early career hurdles, and personal ups and downs. I hold with utmost fondness and gratitude our year of monthly Zoom meetups between 2023 and 2024 to share our respective book chapters and provide mutual encouragement and pep talks amid our full-time teaching schedules.

The pressures of academia have become ever more acute over the past decade, and some of the demands are exhausting and all-consuming. But at its best, it is also an incredible privilege to work in a university environment, and here I want to thank my students especially. Teaching fuels our own continuous education and learning; it sharpens our thinking and gives us a chance to relive our fieldwork by incorporating elements of our research into the classroom discussion. In turn, students give us a window into their lifeworlds as they navigate their own transitions into adulthood. I have learned so much from my students over the years, and many have engaged enthusiastically with the themes of this book during classroom discussions and over coffee around campus. A special thank you to Anpu, Samira, and Nikki for staying in touch all these years and for often asking about the book, and to the team of four undergraduate students—Lily, Caitlin, Cat, and Brandon—who did an independent study with me in the autumn of 2023, focused on hustle geographies. I am also grateful to all my master’s students who have taken my class Precarious Urban Environment these past few years, which became a generative and collaborative space for thinking with several of the themes that underpin this book. Each year, our classroom discussions and your own ethnographic essays have been energizing and inspiring.

I’ve presented aspects of this work in various forums over the years—I am grateful to all participants for the provocative questions and comments that have enhanced my thinking and analysis. These opportunities helped refine my argument and I want to mention three events in particular that came at crucial times during the final year of writing the book: I am grateful to Sarah Hall for inviting me to give the Geoforum Annual Royal Geographical Society conference lecture in 2023, and I thank Suzi Hall and Clive Nwonka for their invaluable responses to that lecture, which came at the perfect time as I was finalizing one of the chapters of the book. I thank Min Tang, Ying Cheng, and Anuj Daga for inviting me to take part in the Youth on the Move Urban Studies Foundation lecture series and to all the participants on that January afternoon in 2024—I will never forget that two-hour Q&A discussion. I am grateful to Karin Schwiter and other labor geography colleagues at the University of Zurich for inviting me to give a seminar and workshop in March 2024 to talk about hustle geographies and urban ethnographic methods.

I can never thank my family enough, starting with my parents and siblings, for their patience and humor, for reminding me to write in a readable way, for bearing with me when I disappeared to write or tend to a deadline during family gatherings. Justin, my partner in all things, thank you for being with me from the very start, and being my best critic, best friend, always willing to chat about the book even when you were not in the mood, and for loving Kenya as much as I do. Sharing it has made this journey so much more enjoyable. My kids, Zoë and Félix, were born during my PhD studies and have been an integral part of this writing and research journey. They bring life and joy to my world even when things seem quite dire. I thank Zoë for reading excerpts of the book during my last year of writing and giving me feedback notes that were always on point and brutally honest. It is moving to think that Zoë was born during the early days of my fieldwork and read draft excerpts in her secondary school years. I thank Félix for making me laugh daily, for wanting to learn Swahili, and for asking about my friends in Nairobi. You both have literally been along this book journey your entire lives—this is both a bit sad and very moving in a way. Sorry and thank you! I will never forget our trip as a family in 2019, when it became clear how the personal is completely intertwined in the fieldwork.

The book is written for diverse audiences. It is first written with my Kenyan comrades in mind, whose perspectives and expressive articulations inform each chapter’s theoretical orientation. The book is then written for my students, who are, as Les Back (2016) once described, “our first and most important audience.” It is of course also written for my academic peers and scholars across the academy, from and with whom I have been fortunate to learn and dialogue since the start of this journey. I hope that the book is written in an accessible way, such that a wider public who might identify with hustling, or at least be curious about the social life and meaning of hustling, might also wish to read it. Ultimately the book seeks out a diverse audience precisely because hustling is relevant to many different groups of people and means different things to each person who identifies with its practice, narrative, and style. I hope this book demonstrates why it is worth taking seriously and merits a more prominent and nuanced place in academic, policy, and popular debate. So I thank, in advance, the readers who decide to crack its pages open and give it a go, for it is now time for me to let it go.