Fashioning Futures

Using vibrant ethnographic storytelling this study shows how young women realise respectable futures through uncertainty in urban Nigeria.

Through vibrant ethnographic storytelling, this study reveals how young women capitalise on uncertainty in urban Nigeria to realise respectable futures. Moving from the house to church, sewing shops and beauty salons, Juliet Gilbert explores how these women fashion themselves in a city shaped by Pentecostal fervour and patriarchal conservatism.Through vibrant ethnographic storytelling, this study reveals how young women capitalise on uncertainty in Calabar, southeastern Nigeria, to realise respectable futures. Exploring young women's daily activities across different sites from the house to church, sewing shops and beauty salons, Fashioning Futures examines the complex ways in which various forms of uncertainty permeate life in a city shaped by Pentecostal fervour and patriarchal conservatism. Juliet Gilbert demonstrates how young women actively engage with forms of uncertainty such as illusion, dissimulation and fakery to present themselves as respectable urbanites and work towards marriage. Revealing young women's centrality in the construction of urban lifeworlds in contemporary Nigeria, Gilbert re-casts youthhood in Africa, both as an analytical category and as a time of experience.