Haraka, haraka-- look before you leap : youth at the crossroad of custom and modernity / edited by Magdalena K. Rwebangira and Rita Liljeström.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Rwebangira, M. K. (Magdalena Kamugisha)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Youth--Tanzania.

Youth.

Tanzania--Social conditions.

Tanzania.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

271 pages : illustrations, map ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Stockholm : Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1998.

Summary:

Haraka, Haraka... Look Before You Leap shows the failure of modern education in preparing the young for adulthood. The nine studies summarized here are based on fieldwork in towns & villages in Tanzania. They highlight the erosion of customary institutions regulating procreation & express the meaning of gender & marriage for the young. Without understanding the dynamics of local customs & attitudes, as well as their significance to ordinary people, change initiated from without becomes both ineffective & unsustainable. Members of the Reproductive Health Study Group at Dar es Salaam University conducted their first set of studies, focusing on the plight of teenage girls. They expanded their scope to embrace the social institutions that regulate reproduction, initiation into adulthood, marriage, & parental obligations. In order to understand change over time they have interviewed women & men of different generations, including potential boyfriends, husbands & runaway fathers. When politicians, political scientists, & economists analyze change, they tend to neglect the long-term impact of the erosion of previous moral orders & the loosening of mutual human bonds which protect women, children, & aged people. The authors report on single mothers, grandparents taking care of their daughters out-of-wedlock children, on generational alienation, on young men refusing to marry yet repeatedly conceiving children whom they abandon, on sexually transmitted disease as proof of manhood, & on girls generating money through sexual services. The book covers differences in social & economic assets, in worldviews & aspirations, in the perception of modernity & what it can offer, & in the rate at which traditional life collapses & the demands of modernity assert themselves.

ISBN:

917106429X

OCLC:

41159797