Engaging Children and Youth in Africa

Yaya Fonye Odette

Description

Representing research from east, central, west, and southern Africa, Engaging Children and Youth in Africa provides a well-balanced analysis of on-the-ground data with methodological and phenomenological issues that abound in much of research in Africa today. With an introduction that charts out some of the most critical approaches in African-centred research on children and youth, contributors to this volume give the reader a glimpse of the product of engaged research that places children and youth at the centre of analysis. The authors follow recent studies that have insisted on seeing African childhood and youth beyond constraining Western notions of vulnerability or innocence, to capture the ways in which recent advances in technology, the intensification of global processes, and continued weakening of the nation-state have not only contributed to new ways of being children and youth but how they have also provided a new lens through which to study social change.

Sujets

• Anthropology

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 03 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9789956762279
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

ENGAGING CHILDREN and YOUTH in AFRICA CODESRIA | Langaa RPCIG

E

ENGAGING CHILDREN and YOUTH in AFRICA Methodological and Phenomenological Issues

E DITEDBY Mwenda Ntarangwi & Guy Massart

Engaging Children and Youth in Africa Methodological and Phenomenological Issues

Edited by Mwenda Ntarangwi & Guy Massart

Lang aa Research & Publishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Cou ncil for the Developesea rch l Science R of Socia m ent in Africa Conseilpou r le d éveloppd e la recherche en sciences socia les en Afriem ent qu e Dakar, Senegal

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookscollective.com ISBN: 9956-762-74-1 ©Mwenda Ntarangwi & Guy Massart 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers

Notes on Contributors

Patricia Henderson Henderson holds a doctoral degree in anthropology and is currently a senior lecturer at Rhodes University in the Department of Anthropology. Her research interests include medical anthropology, the anthropology of children and youth and the anthropology of performance and creativity as social critique. Her theoretical interests include phenomenology and embodiment. Henderson’s most recent publication is a monograph entitledA Kinship of Bones: AIDS, Intimacy and Care in Rural KwaZulu-NatalUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal (2012, Press; 2011, Amsterdam University Press). Ollo Pépin Hien Hien is a political scientist and a researcher at the Department ofSciences Juridiques et Politologie de l’Institut des Sciences des Sociétés (INSS), at theCentre National de Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CNRST)in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Hien is writing a PhD thesis in political sociology at the University of Ouagadougou and theUniversité Catholique de Louvain in Mons, Belgium. He is studying the social, political and historical conditions of the emergence of political opinions in Burkina Faso, the way those opinions are expressed and their impact on contemporary social and political transformations. He teaches at theEcole des Cadres Supérieurs de l’Institut National de Formation en Travail Social (INFTS), Burkina Faso, where he is also associated researcher with theLaboratoire Pluriof the Sociology Department at the University of Ouagadougou. Jeremy L. Jones Jones is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts in the United States of America. He holds a doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago. His fieldwork in Zimbabwe (2006-2009)

focused on young urban men, and their strategies for making ends meet amid severe economic crisis. Prior to taking up the position at Holy Cross, he worked as a part-time lecturer at the University of Pretoria and Eugene Lang College (The New School). Guy Massart Massart is a Belgian social anthropologist. He holds a PhD in Communication Sciences from theEcole Normale Supérieure de Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Lyon(ENS-LSH). He is currently a consultant and professor of anthropology at the M_EIA - Instituto Universitário de Arte, Tecnologia e Cultura, based in Cape Verde, and active member of the Belgian NGO, Songes. Massart’s anthropological work focuses on ethnography that avails opportunities for empowering collaborative practices for working with children and artists and as a communicative activity drawing on multimedia potential (multimedia, website, arts, events). His research interests focus on the transformations of masculinities in Africa, the relations between childhood and public knowledge and on contemporary popular cultures in West Africa. Flavius Mayoa Mokake Mokake is currently pursuing an Interdisciplinary PhD in Public Health, Social Medicine and Health Communication at Ohio University. He holds M.A. degrees in History (University of Buea) and International Affairs with a concentration in African Studies (Ohio University). His research focuses on disease and healthcare, media and governance, peace, youth criminality and socialization. His recent publications include articles inTropical Focus (2011),African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review(2012), a chapter (with Dr Henry K. Kah) inGermany and Its WestAfricanColonies: “Excavations” of German Colonialism in Post-Colonial Times(2013) andRepresentations and Perceptions of the “Other” in Cameroon Popular Culture: The Journey across the Mungo River(2013).

Mwenda Ntarangwi Ntarangwi holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and teaches at Calvin College in Michigan, USA. His research and teaching mainly focus on cross-cultural education and the intersection between culture and performance, especially as experienced and expressed by youth. He is the author ofReversed Gaze: an African Ethnography of American Anthropology(Illinois, 2010),East African Hip Hop: Youth Culture and Globalization (Illinois, 2009), Gender Identity and Performance: Understanding Swahili Cultural Realities Through Song(Africa World Press, 2003), editor ofJesus and Ubuntu: Exploring the Social Impact of Christianity in Africa (Africa World Press, 2011), co-editor ofAfrican Anthropologies: History, Critique and Practice2006), and guest editor of a (Zed, Special Issue ofAfrica Development(Vol. 37 No. 3) focusing on Parent’s Involvement in Children’s Lives in Africa (2012, CODESRIA Books). Silué Oumar Oumar holds a Ph.D. in Political Sociology from the University of Bouaké and is currently in the Department of anthropology and sociology at the Alassane Outtara University in Bouaké. His work and research focus on youth interaction with politics, political parties, gender, and conflict. He is an expert in conflict management and development aid as well as a scientist, science journalist, political analyst and a member of the African Council for the Development of Social Science Research (CODESRIA). Natéwindé Sawadogo Sawadogo is a sociologist and holds a doctoral degree in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom). He is a founding member of theLaboratoire de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Science Sociales et Santéin the department of sociology at the (LARISS) University of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). His research

interests include the history of social sciences in Africa, higher education, public policy, professions, markets and the public interest, and science, technology and innovation in contemporary Africa. He is a contributor to theEncyclopaedia of Global Human Migration (Blackwell, 2012, and author ofA Global History of the Sociology of Professions(Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012).

Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………1 1. The Professional Constructions of Childhood and Youth in Africa: New Directions for Research….31 Natéwindé Sawadogo 2. New Directions in Child and Youth Research in Africa………………………………………..………..61 Patricia Henderson 3. “It’s not Normal but it’s Common”: Elopement, Marriage and the Mediated Recognition of Youth Identity in Harare, Zimbabwe……………………………………………...95 Jeremy Jones 4. Children’s Lives and Children’s Voices: An Exploration of Popular Music’s Representation of Children in East Africa……………137 Mwenda Ntarangwi 5. Teenage Girls, Mobile Phones and Perceptions of Autonomy: examples from Molyko Neighbourhood, Southwest Cameroon……...169 Flavius Mayoa Mokake 6. Street Dialogue Spaces: Youth and the Reshaping of Public Political Process in Ivory Coast……………………………………………..187 Silue Oumar

i

7. The City Production Process: Ouagadougou Youth, Street Culture and New Forms of Engaging with Burkina Faso’s Political Sphere……...215 Ollo Pépin Hien

ii

Introduction Mwenda Ntarangwi and Guy Massart Context Since 1994, CODESRIA has dedicated resources to supporting research and the study of youth and children in Africa with the underlying belief that as the largest segment of Africa’s population, children and youth should be at the centre of any understanding of and planning for Africa’s contemporary social, economic, and political realities. Nestled within CODESRIA’s larger umbrella of Child and Youth Programme this focus has had different tangents of research, including the Child and Youth Institute, established in 2002, a symposium held in 2006 to set the tone for engaged research and policy making in the field, and the Multinational Working Groups that focus on various aspects of this research topic. This volume follows in this same vein, comprising chapters developed from papers presented at a conference titled “New Frontiers of Child and Youth Research in Africa,” held in Douala, Cameroon, on 26 and 27 August 2009. Prior to meeting at this conference, many of the contributors to this volume were also part of a Multinational Working Group on Youth and Identity in Africa through which some of the ideas presented here were developed and expanded. Fortunately, both editors of this volume participated in these last two programs and thus bring experience and perspectives gathered there. Given the expanded field of childhood and youth studies in the world and its accelerated growth in Africa, this volume emerges within a context of conceptual, methodological, and phenomenological debates regarding children and youth

1