This volume contains a range of original studies on the controversial role of youth in politics, conflicts and rebellious movements in Africa. A common aim of the studies is to try and explain why... Show moreThis volume contains a range of original studies on the controversial role of youth in politics, conflicts and rebellious movements in Africa. A common aim of the studies is to try and explain why patterns of generational conflict and violent response among younger age groups in Africa are showing such a remarkably uneven spread across the continent. An introduction by Jon Abbink (Being young in Africa: the politics of despair and renewal) is follwed by three parts: 1. Historical perspectives on youth as agents of change (Murray Last on youth in Muslim northern Nigeria, 1750-2000; G. Thomas Burgess on youth in revolutionary Zanzibar); 2. State, crisis and the mobilization of youth (Peter Mwangi Kagwanja on youth identity and the politics of transition in Kenya, 1997-2002; Karel Arnaut on youth and the politics of history in C“te d'Ivoire; Jok Madut Jok on the position of youth in South Sudan; Piet Konings on anglophone university students and anglophone nationalist struggles in Cameroon; and Sara Rich Dorman on youth and politics in Eritrea); 3. Interventions: dealing with youth in crisis (Yves Marguerat on street children in Lom‚, Togo; Angela McIntyre on the phenomenon of child soldiers in Africa; Simon Simonse on failed Statehood and the violence of young male pastoralists in the Horn of Africa; and Krijn Peters on the reintegration of young ex-combatants in Sierra Leone). [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
In this chapter the author explores how the inhabitants of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, have used their church organization to create a viable social texture for themselves, serving political,... Show moreIn this chapter the author explores how the inhabitants of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, have used their church organization to create a viable social texture for themselves, serving political, economic and kinship goals way beyond the letter of the gospel. In Zambia, towns only came into being during the colonial period. The author starts with a discussion of the relative importance of continuity and transformation in the urban social structure of rural patterns of social relations. He then presents a long monologue of just one urban protagonist, recorded during fieldwork in 1972-1973. Mrs. Evelyn Phiri lives in the township of Kapemperere in Lusaka, and is a member of a well-established church body, the Roman Catholic Church. Her monologue highlights the discussion of elements of continuity and transformation. The church appears as a local formal organization, as a structure of material and ideological/spiritual assistance, and finally as a structure of social control. It assumes functions which can only be understood against the background of preexisting rural traditional patterns, yet caters for needs of crisis support, conflict regulation and the expression of group identity and an emerging class structure. This provides a framework within which to identify urban social processes such as they manifest themselves in the social drama evocated in Mrs. Phiri's monologue. Notes, ref Show less
This chapter presents an extended case study of the personal experiences of a young Kalanga woman in Francistown, Botswana, as she moves from village girlhood to incipient urban consumerism. After... Show moreThis chapter presents an extended case study of the personal experiences of a young Kalanga woman in Francistown, Botswana, as she moves from village girlhood to incipient urban consumerism. After describing the urban setting of Francistown and the expansion of the town's residential space under the Self-Help Housing Agency (SSHA) project in the 1980s, the author relates the story of Mary's transition from village to urban life, with its vastly increased levels of commodity consumption. He describes her initial rural-orientated identity embodying the productive and reproductive tasks defined for women in a village setting, the conflictive character of her village-oriented ties in the domain of kinship and, to a lesser extent, organized Christian religion, her tentative adoption of a new, socially negotiable identity through new aspirations based on the selection of a different reference group (urban female workmates and co-tenants), her learning of the role of "modern, urban consumer", her definition of a career goal, and her budgetary strategies (rotating credit or 'motshelo', and hire purchase). The narrative is based on participant observation and interviews over a period of five years from 1988. Show less
The papers collected in this volume were first presented at a conference on 'Globalization, development and the making of consumers: what are collective identities for?' which was held in The... Show moreThe papers collected in this volume were first presented at a conference on 'Globalization, development and the making of consumers: what are collective identities for?' which was held in The Hague, The Netherlands, on 13-16 March 1997. The papers are concerned with the challenge to the development paradigm presented by its potential submersion within processes of economic globalization. The following chapters are on Africa: The accountability of commodities in a global marketplace: the cases of Bolivian coca and Tanzanian honey (Alberto Arce, Eleanor Fisher) - The Pentecostal gift: Ghanaian charismatic churches and the moral innocence of the global economy (Rijk van Dijk) - 'Progress' as discursive spectacle: but what comes after development? (David Mills on Uganda) - Christian mind and worldly matters: religion and materiality in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast (Birgit Meyer) - Mary's room: a case study on becoming a consumer in Francistown, Botswana (Wim van Binsbergen) - Second-hand clothing encounters in Zambia: global discourses, Western commodities and local histories (Karen Tranberg Hansen) - Globalization and the making of consumers: Zambian kitchen parties (Thera Rasing) - African corruption in the context of globalization (Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan) - Market expansion, globalized discourses and changing identity politics in Kenya (Andreas van Nahl) - The production of translocality: initiation in the sacred grove in southern Senegal (Ferdinand de Jong) - The production of 'primitiveness' and identity: Surma-tourist interactions (Jan Abbink) - Anthropology, identity politics, consumption and development in post-apartheid South Africa (P.A. McAllister) - Rural democratization in Zanzibar: the 1995 general elections (Greg Cameron). Show less
This chapter describes responses to the ecological crisis and political changes in Ethiopia in the early 1990s among the Suri, an agropastoral group in K„fa Region, southern Ethiopia. Data are... Show moreThis chapter describes responses to the ecological crisis and political changes in Ethiopia in the early 1990s among the Suri, an agropastoral group in K„fa Region, southern Ethiopia. Data are derived from fieldwork carried out in the area after the change of regime in 1991. Attention is paid to environmental conditions and the Suri subsistence system, relations between the Suri and neighbouring ethnic groups, drought and famine in the area, in particular in the 1980s, and the Suri attitude towards the interventions of outside agencies, interethnic conflict in the period 1984-1993, Suri recovery and adaptation in the early 1990s, and the effects of drought, famine, and political upheaval on Suri socioeconomic organization, local political relations, and ethnic identities and interethnic relations. Bibliogr., notes, ref Show less
