This book addresses an important topic: how an underclass of poor young men makes ends meet in the ‘thin’ economies of urban Africa in times of rapid social and political change. The eloquently written book is based on extensive conversations with two young men, Ibrahim and Haile, and some of their friends and relatives. It documents their everyday lives, situated in Arada – an old and now dilapidated part of downtown Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The pinnacle of the book is an exploration of the two protagonists’ economic practices in the dire circumstances that they face daily, including a focus on the social networks on which the men draw and depend. The book's central message is that, whereas their room for manoeuvre is seriously limited by material want, daily life is not fully determined by lack of food, or income, or shelter: ‘action and living are made up of attempts to be something other than one's constraints’ (p. 1). This actor-oriented message is, in my view, a healthy antidote against now popular critical interpretations of Africa's urban experience that emphasize the inescapable forces locked into urbanization that produce a disenfranchised underclass.

After taking us on a grand historical tour of Arada – initially inhabited by members of the merchant class and the Ethiopian aristocracy, but since the 1960s by Ethiopian elites who have favoured suburbs over the congested city centre – the book zooms in on contemporary everyday life. My interest was especially piqued in those parts of the book that discuss the young men's ‘hustling’: a diverse set of money-making practices in Arada's street economy that has the connotation of inveigling and deceiving others. Hustling includes showing tourists around and cheating them into buying a drink or a meal, retailing mobile phones and other coveted consumer items of dubious origin, and touting minibuses, especially for innocent country bumpkins, for a fee. It is relevant that none of these activities results in the generation of a steady income, and a central tenet of the young men's daily struggles is to live from hand to mouth without any real prospect of moving out of, or up from, the Arada street economy.

Some notable exceptions to the prevailing pattern underscore the actor-oriented perspective to which the book subscribes, viewing culture as inherently bounded. For instance, there is Yibeltal, a friend of Ibrahim and Haile and, like them, a school dropout coming from a modest background. Unlike them, he secured a decent job as a minibus driver, and he is very critical of the street ‘smartness’ that the protagonists identify as ‘typical’ of Arada culture. Yibeltal hence seems an essential figure to understand the limits of the street culture that encapsulates Ibrahim's and Haile's life. The explanation for Yibeltal's windfall is unnecessarily bland, however. ‘After years as a shoeshine boy, he became a minibus conductor when some of his friends introduced him to the trade. Things got better when he, with … other friends took control of the minibus stop’ (p. 173). Regrettably, we are offered no further information about the solidarities that are apparently locked into Yibeltal's social network and that were mobilized for the explicit purpose of upward mobility. It thus remains difficult to see what actually confines the street culture that is so central in this book.

Yibeltal's case is not an isolated incident. It seems that hustling revolves around a delicate mix of providing social support to one's peers and taking advantage of others. But, of course, ‘peers’ can also be competitors in a struggle for a meagre existence. Curiously, the author observes that ‘sharing resources [among hustlers] did not straightforwardly correspond to increased status and prestige, or to an enhanced capacity to expand and strengthen relationships’ (p. 141), whereas a few pages later he portrays a young man, a hustler called Prof John, whose ‘appeal and charm were drawn partly from the fact that he often helped out tourist guides with small handouts when they were in trouble’ (p. 159). There are other, similar moments where the author appears to trip over the social information that is ingrained in the lives of his informants. It raises serious, in part unanswered, questions about the social dynamics of hustling that are essential to position the alleged immobility of Ibrahim and Haile, and their ilk, in the challenging setting of the Arada street economy. In the last parts of the book, the author seeks to remedy this issue by advancing explanations that make external forces central in understanding wealth accumulation, those of witchcraft accusations and a political conspiracy against the poor in particular. I wonder whether this is necessary: can the fascinating world of the Arada street economy not be understood in its own, social terms?