This study examines the lives of the women and men living in two small rural communities in Zambia on the eve of the collapse of the one-party state in the 1980s. It traces the often complex ways in which local, day-to-day realities are linked to wider economic, political, imaginative structures of power beyond northwestern Zambia. Drawing on fieldwork, the text examines economics and gender, politics and kin relations, state and local relations, and witchcraft. Situating her data within a theoretical framework, the author uncovers the power of the relations that have shaped and defined these communities.