Generations Past: Youth in East African History

by Andrew Burton, Helene Charton-Bigot, Hélène Charton-Bigot

Overview

Contemporary Africa is demographically characterized above all else by its youthfulness. In East Africa the median age of the population is now a striking 17.5 years, and more than 65 percent of the population is age 24 or under. This situation has attracted growing scholarly attention, resulting in an important and rapidly expanding literature on the position of youth in African societies.

While the scholarship examining the contemporary role of youth in African societies is rich and growing, the historical dimension has been largely neglected in the literature thus far. Generations Past seeks to address this gap through a wide-ranging selection of essays that covers an array of youth-related themes in historical perspective. Thirteen chapters explore the historical dimensions of youth in nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century Ugandan, Tanzanian, and Kenyan societies. Key themes running through the book include the analytical utility of youth as a social category; intergenerational relations and the passage of time; youth as a social and political problem; sex and gender roles among East African youth; and youth as historical agents of change. The strong list of contributors includes prominent scholars of the region, and the collection encompasses a good geographical spread of all three East African countries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821419236
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2010
Edition description:	1
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Andrew Burton is an honorary research asso­ciate of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, currently based in Addis Ababa. His publications include African Underclass: Urbanisation, Crime & Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam and the coedited volume Dar es Salaam: Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis.

Hélène Charton-Bigot is a CNRS researcher at the CEAN (Centre d’étude d’Afrique noire) at the University of Bordeaux. She coedited Nairobi contemporain, les paradoxes d’une ville fragmentée, with D. Rodriguez-Torres.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction G. Thomas Burgess Andrew Burton 1

Arms and Adolescence: Male Youth, Warfare, and Statehood in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Africa Richard Reid 25

Youth, Cattle Raiding, and Generational Conflict along the Kenya-Uganda Border Dave Eaton 47

Setting a Moral Economy in Motion: Youth in Tanzania's "Age of Improvement" James L. Giblin 68

Colonial Youth at the Crossroads: Fifteen Alliance "Boys" Hélène Charton-Bigot 84

Raw Youth, School-Leavers, and the Emergence of Structural Unemployment in Late Colonial Urban Tanganyika Andrew Burton 108

Bad Boys in the Bush": Disciplining Murran in Colonial Maasailand Richard Waller 135

Youth, Elders, and Metaphors of Political Change in Late Colonial Buganda Carol Summers 175

Youth, the TANU Youth League, and Managed Vigilantism in Dar es Salaam, 1925-73 James R. Brennan 196

To Differentiate Rice from Grass: Youth Labor Camps in Revolutionary Zanzibar G. Thomas Burgess 221

Premarital Sexuality in Great Lakes Africa, 1900-1980 Shane Doyle 237

"Ruined Lives": An Analysis of Gender Relations, Youth Sexual Behavior, and HIV and AIDS in Early Twenty-First-Century Kenya Joyce Nyairo Eunice Kamaara 262

Protecting Young People: Alcohol, Advertising, and Youth in Kenya Justin Willis 279

Contributors 291

Index 293

Editorial Reviews

This is a rich collection of essays about the concepts of generations and youth in East Africa from the nineteenth century until the present. The chronological reach, the originality of the sources, the clarity of presentation and excellent writing all make it an attractive college text.”—Lidwien Kapteijns, Kendall/Hodder Professor of History at Wellesley College


“This thought-provoking anthology addresses some of the existing gaps in our understanding of the study of youth and generations in Africa…. Overall, this book is a welcome contribution to this emerging sub-field of African history. Its accessible language makes it a valuable resource fit for adoption at different levels in the teaching of African history.”—The Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History


“Generations Past constitutes a thoughtful and sophisticated snapshot of a thriving subfield that will inform work on youth across the continent.”—The Journal of African History

From the Publisher