Artisans of the African Anthropocene: crafting the Patchy Plasticene in northern Ghana

Abstract Given plastics accumulation across the earth’s stratigraphy, climate scientists refer to the latest stage of the Anthropocene as the plasticene . Confounding conventional analyses of plastics through the lens of their unruly afterlives, this article shifts the focus to an iconic plastic object critically important to weathering the uncertainties of Anthropocene times. Large-scale plastic water tanks are vital to managing the compound stressors of climate change, state decline and rising corporate power across West Africa, as in many parts of the global South. Developing the concept of the ‘Patchy Plasticene’ via collaborative and digital ethnography, our research examines these commonplace industrial commodities from the vantage point of artisans specializing in plastic repair in Ghana’s fastest growing city, Tamale. As opposed to viewing plastic as a threat to urban habitability, artisanal work reveals a more possibilistic ontology. Tapping into regional histories of metal working and wider trajectories of plastic circulation, artisanal knowledge practices harness plastic’s durability and polymer chemistry to manage climate stress and counter prevailing political economies. By centring artisans’ innovations and distinctive ‘plastic sensorium’, the African plasticene emerges not as the apotheosis of waste and wasted lives but as a more liveable and enlivened configuration ameliorating the contradictions of late industrialism.