Enterprising Women in Urban Zimbabwe: Gender, Microbusiness, and Globalization

In the early 1990s, Mary Osirim took a team of interviewers to several urban areas in Zimbabwe to learn about the lives and financial status of women working in the “microenterprise sector.” She found that while women were largely excluded from education and much of the Zimbabwean economy, some had found a niche as crocheters, seamstresses, hairdressers, and “market traders” in fruits and vegetables and other goods. There is plenty of sociological theory—the author is, after all, an eminent sociologist—much of it concerning the damage wrought by globalization generally and more specifically

Shapeshifters

The state of mainstream hip-hop is pretty damn depressing. The entire genre has been declared dead a number of times, and the best of a generation make reality shows instead of change. Similarly, the city of Detroit has been ridiculed as economically depressed and full of unprosecuted crime in the shadow of police scandals that have come to prominence again this year. Some might say these are symptoms of a dying city, if it not a dead one. Of the respective states of Detroit and hip-hop, it is also sometimes said that one death begets the other.