Youth Subjectivities and Associational Life in Bamenda, Cameroon - Jude Fokwang* - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Youth Subjectivities and Associational Life in Bamenda, Cameroon - Jude Fokwang* write by . This book was released on 2009. Youth Subjectivities and Associational Life in Bamenda, Cameroon - Jude Fokwang* available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Comaroff and Comaroff 2005:23) and tend to be 'positioned at the leading edge of many aspects of contemporary social change, and experience acutely the risks and opportunities that new social conditions entail' (Hall, Coffey and Williamson 1999:501). [...] The study analyses the ways in which young people in Cameroon negotiate their youth against the predicament of potent forces (both global and national) that structure their marginalisation and undermine their aspirations for meaningful citizenship and social adult status. [...] Central to my argument is the claim that, through associations, young people position themselves and claim adult status by participating as part of a collective in a range of social and moral projects - most of which draw on and celebrate customary markers of social adult status. [...] I also draw on the concepts of personhood and subjectivitity to explain the ways in which social actors position themselves and are positioned in varying social contexts and hierarchies. [...] By dint of the kinds of activities undertaken by the NBA, members see themselves as occupying a superior moral high ground than their female counterparts leading to the emergence of certain masculinities, some of which are carefully staged in order to represent themselves as the leading youth association in the community and in other respects in opposition to feminine identities.
Being Young in Old Town
Being Young in Old Town - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Being Young in Old Town write by Jude Thaddeus Dingbobga Fokwang. This book was released on 2008. Being Young in Old Town available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This study explores the ways in which young people in the neighbourhood of Old Town in Bamenda negotiate the predicament of blocked opportunities and 'arrested adulthood' occasioned by the decline in the nation-building project and prolonged socio-economic and moral crisis in Cameroon. I investigate how urban youth in Old Town construct their moral and socio-cultural worlds through involvement in associations. The main finding suggests that faced with growing uncertainty, young people in Bamenda are positioning themselves as important social actors by drawing on local cultural resources such as associations to construct their social worlds that aim to circumvent their exclusion and marginality. In this light, I analyse youth associations as central although not exclusive to negotiating young people's predicament by focusing on a range of practices through which they seek respectability and claim social adult status.Drawing on the concepts of transition, subjectivities and personhood, I show that young people straddle the worlds of 'youth' and social adulthood, statuses that are not only cultural constructions but also the products of differential power relations and social positioning. I contend that the processes of positioning and the production of personhood are largely experienced through involvement in associational life. The study focuses on three associations, namely the Chosen Sisters, the United Sisters and the Ntambag Brothers Association (NBA). Organised on the basis of seniority and gender, I argue that these associations, while negotiating claims to adult status for their members, tend to challenge state-centric notions of citizenship as they simultaneously position themselves as moral actors upon whom society can count on for regeneration. Through a range of social projects, pursued on behalf of and sanctioned by the community, young people in Old Town reaffirm the centrality of interdependence and the situated understanding of social adulthood predicated on the redistribution of one's success or achievement. This study points to the re-emergent role of associations in negotiating everyday life in the face of crisis. It is a significant contribution towards understanding voluntary and communal associations in general and young people's modes of transitions into social adulthood.
New Perspectives on African Childhood
New Perspectives on African Childhood - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook New Perspectives on African Childhood write by De-Valera NYM Botchway. This book was released on 2019-09-05. New Perspectives on African Childhood available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. What does it mean to be a child in Africa? In the detached Western media, narratives of penury, wickedness and death have dominated portrayals of African childhood. The hegemonic lens of the West has failed to take into account the intricacies of not only what it means to be an African child in local and culturally specific contexts, but also African childhood in general. Challenging colonial discourses, this edited volume guides the reader through different comprehensions and perspectives of childhood in Africa. Using a blend of theory, empiricism and history, the contributors to this volume offer studies from a range of fields including African literature, Afro-centric psychology and sociology. Importantly, in its eclectic geographical coverage of Africa, this book unashamedly presents the good, the bad and the ugly of African childhood. The resilience, creativity, pains and triumphs of African childhood are skilfully woven together to present the myriad of lived experiences and aspirations of children from across Africa. As an important contribution to African childhood studies, this book has the potential to be used by policymakers to shape, sustain or change socio-cultural, economic and education systems that accommodate African childhood dynamics and experiences at different levels.
African Modernities and Mobilities
African Modernities and Mobilities - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook African Modernities and Mobilities write by Nkwi, Walter Gam. This book was released on 2015-05-10. African Modernities and Mobilities available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In this book Walter Gam Nkwi documents the complexities and nuances embedded in African modernities and mobilities which have been overlooked in historical discourses in Africa and Cameroon. Using an ethnographic historical approach and drawing on the intricacies of what it has meant to be and belong in Kom- an ethnic community in the Northwest Region of Cameroon - since 1800, he explores the discourses and practices of kfaang as central to any understanding of mobility and modernity in Kom, Cameroon and Africa at large. The book unveils the emic understanding of modernity through the history and ethnography of kfaang and its technologies and illustrates how these terminologies were conceived and perceived by the Kom people in their social and physical mobilities. It documents and analyzes the historical processes involved in bringing about and making kfaang a defining feature of everyday life in Kom and among Kom subjects.
The Precarity of Masculinity
The Precarity of Masculinity - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Precarity of Masculinity write by Uroš Kovač. This book was released on 2022-03-11. The Precarity of Masculinity available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Since the 1990s, an increasing number of young men in Cameroon have aspired to play football as a career and a strategy to migrate abroad. Migration through the sport promises fulfillment of masculine dreams of sports stardom, as well as opportunities to earn a living that have been hollowed out by the country’s long economic stalemate. The aspiring footballers are increasingly turning to Pentecostal Christianity, which allows them to challenge common tropes of young men as stubborn and promiscuous, while also offering a moral and bodily regime that promises success despite the odds. Yet the transnational sports market is tough and unpredictable: it demands disciplined young bodies and introduces new forms of uncertainty. This book unpacks young Cameroonians' football dreams, Pentecostal faith, obligations to provide, and desires to migrate to highlight the precarity of masculinity in structurally adjusted Africa and neoliberal capitalism.
