Doing the handfailure: At the margins of global capitalism

Abstract

What can an account of manual labour in an increasingly precarious environment tell us about how humans build meaningful lives? Using an ethnographic example from the working relations on a fishing boat based out of the fishing community Tombo in Sierra Leone, I argue that shared bodily work entails possibilities of individual economic gain while simultaneously laying the foundations for solidarity and care. We find a playful competition between working mates at the core of this seeming contradiction. This article explores how people make a living and make a life, not simply despite their continued marginalization in political and economic terms, but through it. In the physically demanding shared labour of hauling a fishing net and learning how to compete for the fish by doing the handfailure, crew members forge relations of care and solidarity that stimulate individual aspirations while asserting the right to life by the sea.