Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2000. Recent years have seen tremendous economic and political changes in Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors to this volume focus on the pressing problem of how actors in their everyday life, political and social action handle uncertainty. With the help of rich empirical material from different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the authors try to understand how actors react, manoeuver, organize and make their actions meaningful in an environment characterized by unpredictability and change.