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 the mid-1970s, teenagers and secondary school and university students suddenly took to the streets of Malawi's main urban areas to proclaim a moral reordering of society based on Christian... Show moreIn the mid-1970s, teenagers and secondary school and university students suddenly took to the streets of Malawi's main urban areas to proclaim a moral reordering of society based on Christian fundamentalist notions. A whole array of Pentecostal groups emerged. The striking feature of this born-again charismatic Pentecostalism is its rigid insistence on a strict moral ideology and a denunciation of alcohol. The author investigates the rejection of alcohol in Malawi's Pentecostal moral order from two perspectives: first, against the backdrop of developments in Malawi's Independent Christianity movement, and, second, in relation to the modernist debate that this type of Pentecostalism represents. The author concludes that the rejection of the use of alcohol by the born-again preachers coincides with a deeper generational conflict. This has had ramifications since it emerged in the context of the Banda regime that relied on gerontocratic power structures. Against this background one can argue that the debate about alcohol was, and still is, a modernist one, a discourse that allows for the moral rejection of things and structures emerging from the impure and threatening 'past'. Includes bibliographical references. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
Paper presented at the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, section: Anthropological contributions to the study of migration, Amsterdam, 19-22 March 1975 Abridged abstract:... Show morePaper presented at the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, section: Anthropological contributions to the study of migration, Amsterdam, 19-22 March 1975 Abridged abstract: Antagonism between older and younger men constitutes a striking feature of a rural community in post-independent Zambia. In the local political processes surrounding the 1973 Zambia general elections, a small group of young men organised themselves within a framework suggested by national party politics, and attempted (with unexpected support from the elders) to construct a youth-centred social order which could dissolve the intergenerational struggle while presenting a blue-print for rural reconstruction. The present paper attempts to interpret these data, in particular as the outcome of a process of social change shaped mainly by labour migration. It examines the pre-colonial career model, changes in rural leadership under colonial rule, the emergence of an urban career model, the changing status of rural youth, ideological change in the colonial era, and the post-independent situation Show less
