The social contagion of aspirations: On the happiness of having a 'life style'

Abstract

Folmann, Birgitte (2017). 'The social contagion of aspirations: On the happiness of having a life style' i Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom og Samfund, nr. 26,Walking the noisy and dusty streets of Gulu when the light is fading and the heat gets bearable gives a good impression of how town life unfolds. You are forced to zigzag to avoid the busy people heading home, the boda bodas (motorcycle taxis, which are heavily laden, often with more than one person and goods), cars trying to navigate through the crowd, and traders offering grilled maize, fried (fast) food, vegetables and fish for sale along the roadside, making the path for traffic even smaller. I try to keep up my pace as I like to be physically active after a day of fieldwork, which generally involves sitting down all day doing interviews. It is an evening like this when Simon -one of my interlocutors, who says he lacks both opportunity and inspiration -suddenly emerges sitting on a boda boda in the growing darkness. He yells at me and says laughingly: "Why are you walking?Walking is only for the poor". Although Simon could be categorized as one of the marginalized poor young men on whom my study focuses, he provides us with a hopeful counterpoint to this category by challenging me with his bantering. I don't know how 20-year-old Simon could afford to take a boda boda that particular evening. He was unemployed and basically on his own as he had recently moved to Gulu town from his village without his family. He handled his situation by earning a little money from petty trading and poorly paid piecework, which he took on a day-to-day basis. And even though he lived in a cheap, basic room, sharing with six other young men for a low rent on the outskirts of Gulu, I know that paying the rent and even getting food on a daily basis was often a challenge for him. Life in Northern Uganda is known to be tough: the region is recovering from a civil war that lasted more than 20 years, and in the aftermath of the war young urban poor people have few chances to get an education or a job in town. For a young man like Simon, navigating the impasse of being young and poor, the good life is comprised of more than getting about in daily life. The good life is not only a state to be obtained, but an ongoing aspiration for something better that gives meaning to life's pursuits. 43The social contagion of aspirations

Introduction. Configuring Contagion in Biosocial Epidemics

“…There are usually other dynamics at work as well. Some of the dynamics involved in epidemic phenomena such as suicide, self-harm, spirit possession, alcoholism and depression may involve social contagion processes such as affect, inspiration, aspiration and haunting (Folmann 2017;Nielsen 2017). Social, historical and political circumstances are always part of the configuration of a contagious landscape that influences members of social groups in various ways.…”