African Lost Generation Essay
How useful is the idea of a ‘lost generation’?
The phrase and idea of a lost generation in studies of African youth, has been closely associated with the work of Cruise O’Brien. In 1996, O’Brien identified a generation of young people (loosely defined)[1] who, as a consequence of factors including political unrest, violence and economic collapse leading to the breakdown of social structures, were unable to complete a socially constructed transition from youth to adulthood – therefore remaining indefinitely young. This generation where described as lost (in a liminal and lamentable world); their inability to mature through social institutions was compounded by their respective inability to economically support themselves, establish an independent household, marry or raise a family. This lost generation is predicated on a male experience. Allegedly these ideas, rather than the term explicitly, became widespread in academic literature, popular press, NGO policies and government concerns. In light of such prevalence an examination of the value of these ideas is worthwhile. This essay will first elaborate and historicise the idea of a lost generation, verifying what is essentially an academic model; it will then apply it to four case studies in order to explain how, while in theory a lost generation can be identified in numerous African contexts the perceived social crisis that they symbolise is much harder to locate.
Understood in retrospect, the lost generation are the African youth of the 1980s and 1990s whose experiences marked ‘a rupture from the relatively comfortable socialisation procedures of the … 1960 – 1970s boom years’ (57). The breakdown of guidance structures, those fallible markers social stability, in this period was precipitated, as John Iliffe explains, by the tripling of the continents population from two to six million between 1950 and 1990. Africa’s public institutions were overwhelmed by this growth and underwhelmed by funding
The phrase and idea of a lost generation in studies of African youth, has been closely associated with the work of Cruise O’Brien. In 1996, O’Brien identified a generation of young people (loosely defined)[1] who, as a consequence of factors including political unrest, violence and economic collapse leading to the breakdown of social structures, were unable to complete a socially constructed transition from youth to adulthood – therefore remaining indefinitely young. This generation where described as lost (in a liminal and lamentable world); their inability to mature through social institutions was compounded by their respective inability to economically support themselves, establish an independent household, marry or raise a family. This lost generation is predicated on a male experience. Allegedly these ideas, rather than the term explicitly, became widespread in academic literature, popular press, NGO policies and government concerns. In light of such prevalence an examination of the value of these ideas is worthwhile. This essay will first elaborate and historicise the idea of a lost generation, verifying what is essentially an academic model; it will then apply it to four case studies in order to explain how, while in theory a lost generation can be identified in numerous African contexts the perceived social crisis that they symbolise is much harder to locate.
Understood in retrospect, the lost generation are the African youth of the 1980s and 1990s whose experiences marked ‘a rupture from the relatively comfortable socialisation procedures of the … 1960 – 1970s boom years’ (57). The breakdown of guidance structures, those fallible markers social stability, in this period was precipitated, as John Iliffe explains, by the tripling of the continents population from two to six million between 1950 and 1990. Africa’s public institutions were overwhelmed by this growth and underwhelmed by funding
Bibliography: Donal D. Cruise O’Brien, A Lost Generation? Youth Identity and State Decay in West Africa, (1996) Mamadou Diouf, ‘Engaging Postcolonial Cultures: African Youth and Public Space’, African Studies Review, 46:2, (2003) Robert Kaplan, ‘The Coming Anarchy’, in Atlantic Monthly, (February, 1994) Tanya Lyons, Guns and Guerilla Girls: Women in the Zimbabwean National Liberation Struggle, (2004) Daniel Mains, ‘Neoliberal times: Progress, Boredom, and Shame among Young Men in Urban Ethiopia’, American Ethnologist Volume 34:4, (2007) Lesley A Jonny Steinberg, ‘Youth in Contemporary Africa’, lecture delivered at University of Oxford, (January, 2012) Lynn Thomas, ‘Gendered Reproduction: Placing Schoolgirl Pregnancies in African History’, in Africa after Gender, (2007) Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, (New York, 1984) Richard Waller, ‘Rebellious Youth in Colonial Africa’, Journal of African History, 47, (2006) ----------------------- [1] For debates over definition see Durham, 2000, pp.115; Jones, 2009, pp.2-3, 13; and Mains, 2007, pp.661.