Kristin Peterson. 2014. Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria
Kristin Peterson. 2014. Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. 238 pp. Kristin Peterson's book is a powerful description of the Nigerian pharmaceutical markets. Its six chapters illustrate the ways daily market life (labor, price, credit, and other social practices) is linked to transnational financial capital as well as policy changes in North America and Nigeria that are mutually constitutive, as well as localized, in significant Lagos markets. Based on extensive archival search, observations, as well as extensive interviews conducted over a period of four summers in Nigeria, the author ethnographically situates Nigeria as a geographically centralized place from which one can see how the rest of the pharmaceutical and other related worlds have come into being. The book focuses on the speculative practices found in the pharmaceutical market to emphasize the ways actors negotiate structural constraints and market conditions. The author examines how volatile markets and speculative practices created new transcontinental drug circuits that are now integral to the drug industry and the lives of Nigerians. Using Idumota (a neighborhood on Lagos Island described as the main market for pharmaceutical distribution in West Africa) as the focus of her research, the author situates the Nigerian drug market and its practices in the context of speculative capital, manufacturing offshoring, and drug marketing. She examines several historical convergences that took place within Nigeria that made it possible for the control over national drug distribution to switch from Nigerian pharmacists and North American and European multinational drug companies to Igbo traders and generic drug manufacturers located mostly in China and India. She describes vividly how people who work in markets anticipate market volatility often fueled by currency fluctuations, changing labor costs, or changing demands within corporations or among consumers and then take risks by speculating on how the market will play out. She further interrogates how multinational corporations engage in merging and acquiring other companies; offshoring much of their businesses to India and China to save on costs; pursued drug development that will lead to blockbuster profits and skip making other needed drugs such as those for neglected tropical diseases; and like in Nigeria, how they dump assets, drug products, and entire markets not serving them well. Peterson argues that the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) forced on Nigeria by the IMF in 1986 during the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida impacted negatively on the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry, describing how investment turnover could not be met mostly due to currency devaluation and the public's increasing inability to purchase drugs. …