Youth Subjectivities And Associational Life In Bamenda Cameroon Jude Fokwang

Download or read book Youth Subjectivities and Associational Life in Bamenda, Cameroon - Jude Fokwang* written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.