Makers and Breakers

Alcinda Honwana is Program Director at the Social Science Research Council; Filip de Boeck is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Africa Research Center, Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

• Introduction: Children & youth in Africa by Filip de Boeck & Alcinda Honwana I Children & Youth In A Global Era Reflections on youth, from the past to the postcolony by Jean & John Comaroff II The Pain Of Agency, The Agency Of Pain Child-soldiers as interstitial & tactical agents by Alcinda Honwana - Young women in the Liberian civil war by Mats Utas - Conceptions of pain & children's expressions of it in Southern Africa by Pamela Reynolds - Consciousness, affliction & alterity in urban East Africa by Brad Weiss III Children, Youth & Marginality: In & Out Of Place The forbidden masquerades of Oku youth & women by Nicolas Argenti - Song, choirs & youth in Botswana by Deborah Durham IV Past The Postcolony? Youth culture & violence in Sierra Leone by Ibrahim Abdullah - Children & witchcraft in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Filip de Boeck - Young & street culture in urban Africa: Addis Ababa, Dakar & Kinshasha by Tshikala Biaya - Afterword by Mamadou Diouf

This is an important collection of sociological studies of African youth over the past two decades. It proposes a collective view which sees young people as breaking with both old and new African traditions. Across the continent marginalised young people