Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T14:58:14.820Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Village Life Is Better Than Town Life”: Identity, Migration, and Development in the Lives of Ugandan Child Citizens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Kristen E. Cheney
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article contextualizes Ugandan urban–rural relations through urban children's knowledge, imaginations, and experiences, which are affected by the present sociohistoric moment in Uganda. Influenced by urban–rural migration, changing notions of family and kinship, and the national government's prolific “development-through-education” campaign, urban schoolchildren imagine “the village” both as an integral imaginary space of ethnic identity origination and a location for fulfillment of national citizenship through development.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Cet article contextualise les relations entre les milieux urbains et ruraux ougandais par le biais des connaissances, de l'imagination et de l'expérience des enfants en milieu urbain sous l'impact du moment socio-historique que l'Ouganda est en train de vivre. Influencés par l'évolution des notions de famille et de parenté, la migration entre les zones urbaines et rurales et la campagne prolifique menée par le gouvernement au niveau national sur le thème “développement par l'éducation,” les écoliers urbains conçoivent le “village” comme espace imaginaire intégral du berceau de leur identité ethnique et du lieu d'accomplissement de la citoyenneté nationale grâce au développement.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , December 2004 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barkan, Joel D., McMulty, Michael L., and Ayeni, M. A. O. 1991. “Hometown” Voluntary Associations, Local Development and the Emergence of Civil Society in Western Nigeria. Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi 478.Google Scholar
Barya, John-Jean. 2000. Reconstituting Ugandan Citizenship Under the 1995 Constitution: A Conflict of Nationalism, Chauvinism, and Ethnicity. Centre for Basic Research No. 55.Google Scholar
Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of the Mind. New York: Ballantine.Google Scholar
Brown, B. Bradford, and Larson, Reed W. 2002. “The Kaleidoscope of Adolescence: Experiences of the World's Youth at the Beginning of the 21st Century.” In The World's Youth: Adolescence in Eight Regions of the Globe, edited by Brown, B. Bradford, Larson, R. W., and Saraswathi, T. S., 61–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cheney, Kristen E. Forthcoming. “Our Children Have Only Known War”: Children's Experiences and the Uses of Childhood in Northern Uganda.” Children's Geographies.Google Scholar
De Coninck, John. 1992. Evaluating the Impact of NGOs in Rural Poverty Alleviation: Uganda Country Study. Overseas Development Institute 51.Google Scholar
Denzer, Laray, and Mbanefoh, Nkechi. 1998. “Women's Participation in Hometown Associations.” In Hometown Associations: Indigenous Knowledge and Development in Nigeria. IT Studies in Indigenous Knowledge and Development, edited by Honey, Rex and Okafor, Stanley I., 123–34. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.Google Scholar
Diouf, Mamadou. 2003. “Engaging Postcolonial Cultures: African Youth and Public Space.” African Studies Review 46 (2): 1–12.Google Scholar
Epstein, A. L. 1978. Ethos and Identity: Three Studies in Ethnicity. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Evans, Ruth, ed. 2001. Ten Years After: Celebrating Uganda's Success in Implementing Children's Rights. Andover, UK: UNICEF.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Perspectives on Southern Africa 57. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Geschiere, Peter, and Gugler, Josef. 1998. “The Urban–Rural Connection: Changing Issues of Belonging and Identification.” Africa 68: 309–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gugler, Josef. 2002. “The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad: The Urban–Rural Connection in Africa.” African Studies Review 45 (1): 21–41.Google Scholar
Honey, Rex, and Okafor, Stanley I., eds. 1998. Hometown Associations: Indigenous Knowledge and Development in Nigeria. IT Studies in Indigenous Knowledge and Development. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.Google Scholar
James, Allison, and Prout, Alan. 1997. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. Washington, D.C.: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Jua, Nantang. 2003. “Differential Responses to Disappearing Transitional Pathways: Redefining Possibility among Cameroonian Youths.” African Studies Review 46: 12–36.Google Scholar
Kabadaki, Kyama K. 2001. “The Feminization of Poverty in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa,” In Social Problems in Africa: New Visions, edited by Rwomire, Apollo, 93–110. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Katz, Cindi 1991. “Sow What You Know: The Struggle for Social Reproduction in Rural Sudan.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 81: 488–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, Cindi. 2001a. “Growing Girls/Closing Circles: Limits on the Spaces of Knowing in Rural Sudan and United States Cities.” In Gendered Modernities: Ethnographic Perspectives, edited by Hodgson, D. L., 173–202. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Katz, Cindi. 2001b. “On the Grounds of Globalization: A Topography for Feminist Political Engagement.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26: 1213–34.Google Scholar
Kilbride, Philip L., and Kilbride, Janet C. 1990. Changing Family Life in East Africa: Women and Children at Risk. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Kneller, George F. 1965. Educational Anthropology: An Introduction. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Kuper, Adam. 1997. Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Levinson, Bradley A., Foley, Douglas E., and Holland, Dorothy C. 1996. The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2002. “African States, Citizenship, and War: A Case Study.” International Affairs 78: 493–506.Google Scholar
Mayall, Berry. 2000. “Conversations with Children.” In Research with Children, edited by Christensen, Pia and James, Allison, 120–35. New York: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Mazrui, Ali A. 2001. “Ideology and African Political Culture.” In Explorations in African Political Thought, edited by Kiros, Teodros, 97–131. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J. Clyde. 1956. The Kalela Dance: Aspects of Social Relationships among Urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia. Vol. 27. Rhodes-Livingstone Papers. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Nieuwenhuys, Olga. 1996. “The Paradox of Child Labor and Anthropology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 237–51.Google Scholar
Nsamenang, A. Bame. 2002. “Adolescence in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Image Constructed from Africa's Triple Inheritance.” In The World's Youth: Adolescence in Eight Regions of the Globe, edited by Brown, B. Bradford, Larson, Reed W., and Saraswathi, T. S., 61–104. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paige, John Rhodes. 2000. Preserving Order amid Chaos: The Survival of Schools in Uganda 1971–1986. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Parkin, David, ed. 1975. Town and Country in Central and Eastern Africa International African Institute. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pigg, Stacey Leigh. 1992. “Inventing Social Categories through Place: Social Representations and Development in Nepal.” Comparative Studies in Science and History 34: 491–513.Google Scholar
Plotnicov, Leonard. 1967. Strangers to the City: Urban Man in Jos, Nigeria. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Robson, Elsbeth, and Ansell, Nicola. 2000. “Young Careers in Southern Africa: Exploring Stories from Zimbabwean Secondary School Students.” In Children's Geographies, Critical Geographies, edited by Holloway, Sarah and Valentine, Gill, 174–93. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schumaker, Lyn. 2001. Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in Central Africa. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Southall, A. 1975. “Forms of Ethnic Linkage between Town and Country.” In Town and Country in Central and Eastern Africa, International African Institute, edited by Parkin, D., 265–75. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Southall, Aidan, and Gutkind, P. 1957. Townsmen in the Making. Kampala: East African Institute of Social Research.Google Scholar
Trager, Lillian. 1998. “Home–Town Linkages and Local Development in South-Western Nigeria: Whose Agenda? Whose Impact?” Africa 68: 360–82.Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard P. 1984. “The Manchester School in South-Central Africa.” Annual Review of Anthropology 13: 157–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Women's Commission on Refugee Women and Children. 2001. Against All Odds: Surviving the War on Adolescents. Promoting the Protection and Capacity of Ugandan and Sudanese Adolescents in Northern Uganda. New York: Women's Commission on Refugee Women and Children.Google Scholar