La chance

The concept of la chance accounts for everyday knowledge production in uncertain contexts in Bamako, Mali, where university graduates constitute an educational elite strongest affected by unemployment. Graduates know that la chance decides whether they succeed or fail. Susann Ludwig shows that this concept embodies common sense as much as it offers the possibility of the extraordinary. Graduates play »the game of la chance«, in which success is defined by a continuation of play rather than an end goal. Providing an explorative experience to the reader, this study accounts for the elusiveness of la chance in the Bamako context and beyond.

Susann Ludwig, born in 1987, is affiliated with the University of Leipzig, Germany. She did her doctorate at the Centre for African Studies at Universität Basel (ZASB). As a social anthropologist in African studies, she is fascinated by the every-day play of people doing things, and by questions related to chance, space, relationality, and possibility. Overall, she has spent two years doing ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa, particularly in Bamako, Mali.