Sai fora: youth, disconnectedness and aspiration to mobility in the Bijagó Islands (Guinea-Bissau)1

Bordonaro, Lorenzo

doi:10.4000/etnografica.1253

Cited by 22 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…For such youths, both abroad and in Bissau, paying at least lip service to allegiance to a national imagined community is a sign of their moral maturity-their capacity to act as elders themselves-even as their declarations are limned by an ongoing, although less easy to articulate, antagonism between youth and elders in the rural context. So it is in the practices of these emigrants and would-be emigrants today (see Bordonaro 2009) that we see some of the crucial patterns that are emerging to affect the shape of Guinea-Bissau tomorrow. Johnson argues (2005) that it is far more likely for young and older Mandinga alike to see themselves as Mandinga or Guinean or African rather than as Muslim, as they confront prejudice among both Portuguese and among other migrant Muslim peoples in Lisbon.…”

Section: Guinea-bissau Tomorrowmentioning

confidence: 96%

Conclusion: Guinea-Bissau Yesterday… and Tomorrow

Gable¹

2009

Afr. Stud. Rev.

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I had the pleasure of commenting on the articles in this issue when they were first presented as papers at the 2006 annual meeting of the African Studies Association, and the remarks that follow remain true to the character of those comments while acknowledging that the original papers have been reworked and updated. These provocative articles, coupled with my experiences doing ethnographic research in Guinea-Bissau—first among Manjaco in the village-cluster of Bassarel more than twenty years ago, and more recently (and briefly) among immigrant Manjaco in Lisbon—have led me to reflect upon anthropology's relationship to recent history, and to what anthropologists can contribute to an understanding of Guinea-Bissau: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Anthropology has a peculiar relationship to events, especially events that affect whole nations or regions. Anthropologists wish to be current, and we want to illuminate the big picture. And yet we have to acknowledge that there are inherent constraints in our work: the investigations we engage in are usually time consuming, our reports are therefore always belated, and our conclusions are the product of an intimate engagement with relatively few people who are, moreover, often situated on the periphery or at the margins of the state. Thus, even when the articles in this issue were first presented, “today” was already history because their focus was on the period after the war of 1998–99, which began as an attempt by the military to oust President Vieira and ended up as a protracted conflict (largely restricted to the capital, Bissau) that destroyed important infrastructure, caused NGOs to cease operations throughout the country, and led to the mass exodus of at least a quarter-million people from the capital city to seek refuge as “guests” in rural villages (see Vigh 2006).

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Section: Guinea-bissau Tomorrowmentioning

confidence: 96%

Conclusion: Guinea-Bissau Yesterday… and Tomorrow

Gable¹

2009

Afr. Stud. Rev.

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“…These frustrating urban experiences led young men to believe in a “unilinear, teleological narrative” (Bordonaro , 134), according to which Pikine is at the bottom end of a (linear) scale of development, while the “Global North” sits at the top. In this narrative, their own locality is evaluated as a bad place to be, and its inhabitants are described as stuck in non‐movement and non‐development at the fringes of a globalized world, disconnected from other parts of the world.…”

Section: “Avoir Rien” —”Nothingness” and “Non‐advancement”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Opportunistic Waiting”: Tea and Young Men's Gatherings in Pikine, Senegal

Prothmann

2019

City & Society

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Toog (sitting), rey temps bi (killing time), and xaar (waiting) are expressions that characterize the current predicament of young males in Pikine, an urban area in the Dakar region of Senegal. These young men, who gather together daily in the koñ (i.e., a hangout at a street corner), emphasize this predicament as only a temporary circumstance of life, which I conceive of as "opportunistic waiting." Overall, the local societal atmosphere makes young men feel under constant pressure to achieve something in life in order to become full-fledged responsible men, an endeavor that is obstructed by a plethora of factors. However, in Pikinois society, "waiting" can also be seen in a positive way as an indicator of social status, as it signals that one is not so poor as to accept every kind of work. This paper, based on ethnographic research conducted over a period of eleven months between 2011 and 2013, assesses "opportunistic waiting" as a meaningful constructed temporality offering sociability among young men who are all in the same situation of not being able to become social adults. [Immobility; Mobility; Waithood; Youth; Dakar] City & Society, Vol. 31, Issue 2, pp. 208-226, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X.

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“…People were progressively deprived not only of their means of social reproduction, but also of the main services expected in the urban life, such as electricity, water supplies, school, public health and other public facilities. In this context, the contrast between the increasing availability of foreign images and goods and the lack of opportunities to appropriate them is experienced by most Guineans as a growing gap between desire and possibility (Weiss 2004a;Bordonaro 2009). Young urban males are especially affected by this situation, as lack of resources and employment force them to remain dependent on family elders, without the possibility of getting married and achieving adulthood, and being stuck in a state of 'social moratorium' (Vigh 2010:148).…”

Section: Dreaming Of a Better Life In Bissaumentioning

confidence: 99%

The Second Coming, Successful Life, and the Sweetness of Guinea: Evangelical Thoughts about the Future in Guinea-Bissau

Formenti

2017

J. Relig. Afr.

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Hope, aspirations, and drive to the future have recently been the focus of academic concern about the ways in which people are thinking and producing their future in a time of great uncertainty. By exploring the distinct ways in which evangelical believers in Guinea-Bissau are engaged in imagining their future, this article aims to portray evangelical Christianity as a source of aspirations and visions of possible futures in contemporary Africa. Moreover, by comparing the programme of cultural and social regeneration pursued by nationalists in the 1960s and ’70s and the current evangelical project of personal and collective redemption, I argue that evangelical churches are promoting a politics of hope that translates Amílcar Cabral’s legacy in their own terms. Finally, I show how, in the wake of the failure of nationalist narratives, evangelical churches are fostering an emerging conceptualization of modernity as connectivity that underlies new dreams of a better future.

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Sai fora: youth, disconnectedness and aspiration to mobility in the Bijagó Islands (Guinea-Bissau)1

Cited by 22 publications

References 11 publications

Conclusion: Guinea-Bissau Yesterday… and Tomorrow

Conclusion: Guinea-Bissau Yesterday… and Tomorrow

“Opportunistic Waiting”: Tea and Young Men's Gatherings in Pikine, Senegal

The Second Coming, Successful Life, and the Sweetness of Guinea: Evangelical Thoughts about the Future in Guinea-Bissau

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