Fashioning Futures: Uncertainty and Young Women's Livelihoods in Urban Nigeria

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.

- Explores feminine youthful experiences in detail, helping readers understand the complex challenges Nigeria faces as it looks towards the future
- Uses rich ethnographic storytelling, following the lives of individuals throughout the book
- Focuses on young women's broader engagement with Pentecostalism across city life