The articles that appear in this part issue focus on disparate topics, from rumours of electoral fraud to the production of art, and span the African continent from Guinea and Ghana in the west to Zimbabwe in the south. Despite their evident differences, the contributors see their pieces as united by a common theme: emergence. Elaborating on Simone's influential exploration of the intertwined concepts of emergence and emergency (2004), as well as prior research in Africa on informal economic practices (the exchange of goods and services unregulated by states) (Hart 1973; Piot 2010; Roitman 2004; Weiss 2009), we consider emergence to be the process by which new social formations become thinkable, repeatable, and even – at times – habitual. Although conditions of crisis or precarity or even revolutionary upheaval might be fertile ground for emergence, insofar as these social conditions represent ‘rupture[s] in the organization of the present’ (Simone 2004: 4), the articles here also show that new social practices do not emerge out of nowhere. Rather, these articles demonstrate that attention to quotidian encounters can illuminate how citizens mobilize previously existing norms and patterns of behaviour in response to social change or economic crisis.

中文翻译：

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出现的民族志：日常政治及其在非洲的起源

本部分刊载的文章关注不同的话题，从选举舞弊的谣言到艺术创作，横跨非洲大陆，从西部的几内亚和加纳到南部的津巴布韦。尽管存在明显差异，但贡献者认为他们的作品被一个共同的主题团结在一起：出现。详细阐述 Simone 对突发事件和紧急情况相互交织的概念的有影响力的探索（2004 年），以及之前在非洲对非正规经济实践（不受国家监管的商品和服务的交换）的研究（Hart 1973；Piot 2010；Roitman 2004；Weiss 2009），我们认为出现是新社会形态变得可思考、可重复，甚至——有时——习惯的过程。尽管危机或不稳定甚至革命动荡的条件可能是出现的沃土，但就这些社会条件而言，这些社会条件代表了“当前组织的破裂”（Simone 2004：4），这里的文章也表明，新的社会实践不是凭空出现的。相反，这些文章表明，对日常遭遇的关注可以阐明公民如何动员以前存在的规范和行为模式来应对社会变革或经济危机。