BLAIR RUTHERFORD is professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. For over 25 years, his ethnographic research in various countries in sub-Saharan Africa has focused on the cultural politics of predominantly rural livelihoods, examining in particular the varied terms, conditions and contestations of labour relations along racialized, gendered, classed and citizenship axes within overlapping (and at times competing) scales of action.