scholarly journals ‘We are taught to act’: hustling on the move in Kampala and Nairobi

Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
William Monteith ◽  
George Mirembe
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Economic Opportunities ◽  
African Cities ◽  
Individual Survival ◽  
Urban Contexts

AbstractThis article explores the question of what happens when highly socialized and contingent forms of provisioning go wrong, and young men are forced to start again in unfamiliar urban contexts. The decline of George Mirembe's moneylending business in Kampala pre-empted his departure from the country and his arrival in Nairobi in search of new socio-economic opportunities. Lacking the documents and language skills necessary to enter formal sectors of the economy, George claimed asylum as a sexual refugee while working as a smuggler and a voice actor in the shadow film industry. His activities illustrate the advantages and limitations of the hustle as a framework for understanding the activities of transnational ‘others’ in African cities. I argue that translational practices of acting and storytelling have become a generalized tactic of survival among migrants in urban East Africa. Such practices are illustrative of a form of ‘uprooted hustle’ – or hustling on the move – that is oriented towards individual survival and exit rather than place-based transformation.

‘War is Good for Thieving!’ The Symbiosis of Crime and Warfare Among the Kuria of Tanzania

Africa ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Fleisher
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Cash Market ◽  
Cattle Raiding ◽  
Good For ◽  
Cattle Herds ◽  
The Government ◽  
Livestock Trade

AbstractAmong the agro-pastoral Kuria people of East Africa, whose population straddles the border between Tanzania and Kenya, many young men are engaged in an illicit, violent livestock trade in which cattle stolen in Tanzania are sold to Tanzanian or Kenyan buyers for cash. This raiding is inextricably bound up with the phenomenon of warfare between mutually antagonistic Kuria clans, which not only serves to legitimise raids on the enemy's cattle herds so long as the fighting rages but which also fosters and sustains an atmosphere of inter-clan enmity that lends support to cattle raiding, particularly on the herds of former adversaries, even after hostilities have ended. Clan warfare emerges as both a cause and an effect of raiding as well as serving as a training ground for novice raiders. On the basis of field research in the Tarime District lowlands, the article argues that although Kuria cattle raiding, oriented to the cash market, owes its existence to capitalist penetration and is driven by the rising demand for cattle, particularly in Kenya, it remains heavily dependent on inter-clan warfare, which has two main causes: animosity engendered by commercialised cattle raiding, and boundary adjustments initiated by the government, either for administrative reasons or, paradoxically, in an effort to resolve existing disputes over access to pasture, grazing and water.

scholarly journals In bodies and homes: Gendering citizenship in Southern African cities

Urbani izziv ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol Supplement (30) ◽  
pp. 37-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Oldfield ◽  
Netsai Sarah Mathsaka ◽  
Elaine Salo ◽  
Ann Schlyter
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Cities ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
The City

How do the everyday contexts in which ordinary women struggle to access and maintain a place on the peripheries of the city shape experiences of citizenship? This paper explores this question in George, a periurban Lusaka neighbourhood in Zambia and through experiences of Zimbabwean migrant women’s negotiation of a place on the peri-urban edges of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. In the logics of citizen-subjects, the experiences of these groups of women should be poles apart, the first with rights imbued in citizenship, the second migrants without. Here instead, we demonstrate the ways in which gendered political subjectivities embed in the hard, lived realities of home. In placing gender and everyday body politics at the forefront of our analysis, the paper makes visible the micro-realities of making home. We demonstrate that an assumed recursive relationship between citizenship and home, as a physical and social place in the city, is problematic. Building on debates on citizenship and its gendering in post-colonial African urban contexts, we demonstrate instead that citizenship and its gendered contestations and emergent forms in Southern African are crafted in quotidian activities in homes and everyday city contexts.

scholarly journals Straining: Young Men Working through Waithood in Freetown, Sierra Leone

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon Finn ◽  
Sophie Oldfield
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
African Cities ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Youth Bulge ◽  
The City ◽  
Informal Trading

Young men in precarious situations of persistent un(der)employment in post-civil war Freetown, Sierra Leone are depicted in popular and policy debate as “stuck” economically or “dangerous” and prone to violence. In the present paper, by contrast, we draw on young men's explanations of their work and livelihood struggles as “straining.” We explore the logic of straining, its innovations and demands, and its geography across the city, especially where acts of straining interface with the prohibition and criminalisation of informal trading. We argue that straining innovates and endures because of (not despite) young men's marginalisation and limited autonomy and power. In this context, young men build forms of provisional agency and enact dynamic forms of waithood, in their strategies to earn a living to try to support their families and to negotiate a transition from youth to manhood. Drawing on this research, we argue for a more complex understanding of young men at work in Freetown, in particular, and of the “youth bulge,” in general, in African cities.

“There's Nothing Holding Us Back”: The Enduring and Shifting Cultural Outlooks of Inner City Second–Generation Latinos

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-172
Author(s):  
María G. Rendón
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Inner City ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Opportunity Structure ◽  
Men I ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
Urban Conditions ◽  
And Behavior

I advance knowledge on the cultural outlooks of inner city second–generation Latinos, specifically their views about getting ahead. I draw on a longitudinal study of 42 young men transitioning to adulthood from two neighborhoods in Los Angeles close to 150 interviews. Researchers have suggested urban contexts negatively impact the cultural outlooks of young men. I find urban conditions do not uniformly impinge on the outlooks of Latinos, but interact with their migrant histories and social capital. Specifically, Latinos’ segregation informs their beliefs in the American opportunity structure and their social support ties their faith in their ability to get ahead. Most respondents are “resolute optimists”: strong believers in the American Dream and optimistic about their chances to succeed. “Determined young men” lose faith in the American Dream but persevere, while “self–blamers” are harsh critics not of the American opportunity structure but their personal choices and behavior. Latinos’ outlooks vary and are fluid, shifting with structural conditions.

Precarity, Fixers, and New Imaginative Subjectivities of Youth in Urban Cameroon

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Divine Fuh
Keyword(s):  
Urban Youth ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
African Cities ◽  
Youth Agency

This essay explores how it may be possible to dismantle and recreate frameworks for understanding youth agency and precarity in African cities. These are places where youth are regularly portrayed as toxic. The essay reflects and builds on an emerging body of literature that approaches youth as civic agents actively involved in reimagining and recreating alternative possibilities for themselves and their communities. Addressing these works, the notion of fixers is used to unpack the ways in which young men exhibit care and solidarity in urban Cameroon. Through productive masculinities, urban youth develop new modes of agency that allow them to become entrepreneurs of hope, despite the permanent difficulties of finding a place in a society that apparently does not have one for them.

The analysis of “Gels” in polymer films

1989 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 362-363
Author(s):  
G. M. Brown ◽  
D. F. Brown ◽  
J. H. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Weight ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Local Stress ◽  
Melt Index ◽  
Polyethylene Films ◽  
Crosslinked Polymer ◽  
Polymeric Gels ◽  
Mineral Particles ◽  
Polymeric Species ◽  
Special Concern

The term “gel”, in the jargon of the plastics film industry, may refer to any inclusion that produces a visible artifact in a polymeric film. Although they can occur in any plastic product, gels are a principle concern in films where they detract from the cosmetic appearance of the product and may compromise its mechanical strength by acting as local stress concentrators. Many film gels are small spheres or ellipsoids less than one millimeter in diameter whereas other gels are fusiform-shaped and may reach several centimeters in length. The actual composition of gel inclusions may vary from miscellaneous inorganics (i.e. glass and mineral particles) and processing additives to heavily oxidized, charred or crosslinked polymer. The most commonly observed gels contain polymer differing from the bulk of the sample in its melt viscosity, density or molecular weight.Polymeric gels are a special concern in polyethylene films. Over the years and with the examination of a variety of these samples three predominant polymeric species have been observed: density gels which have different crystallinity than the film; melt-index gels in which the molecular weight is different than the film and crosslinked gels which are comprised of crosslinked polyethylene.

Language Skills Blossom From STEM

ASHA Leader ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 24-25
Author(s):  
Shelley D. Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Language Skills
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