African Youth
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Cultivating Moral Citizenship
Jude D. Fokwang
228 Pages | 6 x 9 | © 2023
ISBN: 9781957296029 (Hardback)
ISBN: 9781957296012 (Paperback)
ISBN: 9781957296036 (eBook)
In Cultivating Moral Citizenship, ethnographer, Jude Fokwang unpacks the meanings, mechanisms and processes through which young people in an inner city of the West African nation of Cameroon respond to local and global challenges as they seek to position themselves as social adults. Faced with the decline of old predictabilities, the diminishing capacity of the postcolonial state to control its destiny and the precarity of waithood, young people instrumentalise the opportunities and resources afforded by associations to build reciprocal relationships that advance their individual and collective pursuits in a community that has increasingly become transnational. In positioning themselves as moral actors, the young people in this ethnography invest in high profile social and communal projects, including the enforcement of moral orthodoxies that enable readers to appreciate the ways in which moral citizenship is engendered, expanded and eroded simultaneously.
Something New in Old Town
Set in the sprawling community of Old Town, the cradle of the modern city of Bamenda (Cameroon), Something New in Old Town explores a unique approach to grassroots development and communal empowerment. This intimate documentary, filmed over three years in the homes, streets and work places of Old Town, takes us into the world of dozens of committed young men and women who strive to change their community as “searchers” of solutions to the manifold problems that beset young people and the urban environment in many African cities. Through their charitable acts, hygiene campaigns and commitment to grassroots development, they build and impart hope in a community that bears the scars of a chequered history.