Potentiality in crisis: Making and living the potential in Angola’s boom and bust

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article documents the social generation and experience of potentiality in the context of radical uncertainty. After a booming decade, the oil bust in mid-2014 wrought havoc on Angola’s economy. Immigrant traders and entrepreneurs from West Africa responded to the crisis by assessing their possible livelihoods in and away from Angola. They further couched their search for economic potential in a discourse on Angola’s own potential for recovery. By (de)potentializing economies and livelihoods, traders entrenched potentiality, rather than actuality, as a pervasive aspect of their sociality and their ethical orientations.