Makers and Breakers

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

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

• Introduction: Children & youth in Africa by Filip de Boeck & Alcinda Honwana I Children & Youth In A Global Era Reflections on youth, from the past to the postcolony by Jean & John Comaroff II The Pain Of Agency, The Agency Of Pain Child-soldiers as interstitial & tactical agents by Alcinda Honwana - Young women in the Liberian civil war by Mats Utas - Conceptions of pain & children's expressions of it in Southern Africa by Pamela Reynolds - Consciousness, affliction & alterity in urban East Africa by Brad Weiss III Children, Youth & Marginality: In & Out Of Place The forbidden masquerades of Oku youth & women by Nicolas Argenti - Song, choirs & youth in Botswana by Deborah Durham IV Past The Postcolony? Youth culture & violence in Sierra Leone by Ibrahim Abdullah - Children & witchcraft in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Filip de Boeck - Young & street culture in urban Africa: Addis Ababa, Dakar & Kinshasha by Tshikala Biaya - Afterword by Mamadou Diouf