Overview

The studies in this book present many different views onto the lives of the young around the continent. They contribute to a theoretical, ethnographic and historical understanding of issues concerning children, youth, agency, locality, globalization and identity from the past to the postcolony and beyond. As such they strive to achieve a better insight into what lives in the hearts and minds of African youngsters.

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9780852554340

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Reviews

This is an important collection of sociological studies of African youth over the past two decades. It proposes a collective view which sees young people as breaking with both old and new African traditions. Across the continent marginalised young people A sobering book, the authors provide a detailed analysis of how African children are manipulated and relegated to the margins of the public domain. The studies presented in this timely publication touch on crucial areas concerning the youth and their mechanisms for coping with their continued marginalisation. The book's strong point is its theoretical application of concepts of agency and pain, as this sheds light on how youth and women have adapted to traumatic conditions such as rape, conflict and unemployment. The perspectives provided are relevant tools that can be utilised to understand how youth in general, and not just in Africa, are coping with marginalisation. ...this is a publication with a difference. By revealing a number of significant constraints implemented by the elite power structure, it provides the reader with food for thought and a deeper understanding of the complexities that power structures create to exclude young people from the benefits of mainstream economic participation, political acknowledgement and the opportunity to be free from unnecessary and unjust pain. This volume appeals not only to researchers in the field, but to civil society organisations, think tanks, government departments, universities and various other stakeholders. NEW AGENDA

'This is an important collection of sociological studies of African youth over the past two decades. It proposes a collective view which sees young people as breaking with both old and new African traditions. Across the continent marginalised young people reject the various pre-colonial African social traditions as well as the postcolonial structure and rhetoric of the African nation state. Young Africans reject it because in their experience they perceive neither social framework as having anything to do with them. Not only have African youth fractured the past, they are therefore, and inevitably, making a new kind of society in Africa. They are both makers and breakers within society.' - Micheal Etherton in Leeds African Studies Bulletin. 'In this sobering book, the authors provide a detailed analysis of how African children are manipulated and relegated to the margins of the public domain. The studies presented in this timely publication touch on crucial areas concerning the youth and their mechanisms for coping with their continued marginalisation. The book's strong point is its theoretical application of concepts of agency and pain, as this sheds light on how youth and women have adapted to traumatic conditions such as rape, conflict and unemployment. 'The perspectives provided are relevant tools that can be utilised to understand how youth in general, and not just in Africa, are coping with marginalisation. Globally, youth confront pain through social interaction and via identifying themselves through certain cultures, norms or practices. The publication argues, in essence, that cultural contexts shape the experience and expression of pain. '...this is a publication with a difference. By revealing a number of significant constraints implemented by the elite power structure, it provides the reader with food for thought and a deeper understanding of the complexities that power structures create to exclude young people from the benefits of mainstream economic participation, political acknowledgement and the opportunity to be free from unnecessary and unjust pain. This volume appeals not only to researchers in the field, but to civil society organisations, think tanks, government departments, universities and various other stakeholders.' - in New Agenda

This is an important collection of sociological studies of African youth over the past two decades. It proposes a collective view which sees young people as breaking with both old and new African traditions. Across the continent marginalised young people A sobering book, the authors provide a detailed analysis of how African children are manipulated and relegated to the margins of the public domain. The studies presented in this timely publication touch on crucial areas concerning the youth and their mechanisms for coping with their continued marginalisation. The book's strong point is its theoretical application of concepts of agency and pain, as this sheds light on how youth and women have adapted to traumatic conditions such as rape, conflict and unemployment. The perspectives provided are relevant tools that can be utilised to understand how youth in general, and not just in Africa, are coping with marginalisation. ...this is a publication with a difference. By revealing a number of significant constraints implemented by the elite power structure, it provides the reader with food for thought and a deeper understanding of the complexities that power structures create to exclude young people from the benefits of mainstream economic participation, political acknowledgement and the opportunity to be free from unnecessary and unjust pain. This volume appeals not only to researchers in the field, but to civil society organisations, think tanks, government departments, universities and various other stakeholders. NEW AGENDA

Author Information

Alcinda Honwana is Program Director at the Social Science Research Council; Filip de Boeck is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Africa Research Center, Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

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