Changes in kinship relations are part of the broad social change in all African societies. This article highlights trends and characteristics of changing kinship relations in West Africa. Its analysis focuses on the twentieth century, which was shaped by the colonial conquest and profound societal transformations like the political independence of the African colonies. In analysing three important kinship relations – parent–child relations, marriage, and care for the elderly – this article depicts the trends and conditions of historical change of these relationships. It also shows whether and how these changes are accompanied by conflict, and how people refer to the different ways of dealing with those conflicts. The article is based on empirical data from three thematically intertwined research projects.
Introduction 2 to reproduce notions of hopelessness, decline and a bleak future (Cruise O'Brien 1996; Honwana 2014). On the other hand, today's children and youth are perceived as the hope for Africa's future, a generation which is seen as having the potential to overcome social, political and moral decline and break new ground in order to find a place in (a better) society (Diouf 2003; Masquelier 2005). Emerging middle classes in African cities, increasing political engagement in totalitarian states, and spaces of economic and cultural creativity in urban spheres serve as examples of this (Spronk 2012; Kirschner 2010; Perullo 2005). While analyses of African children and youth as a generation of either hope or decline have added important insights, such studies often speak of, and for, young people without taking their explicit engagement with the future into account. We believe that in order to paint a more differentiated picture of childhood, youth and future in Africa, we need to study the young generation from its own perspective; the ideas, expectations and concrete practices of young people with regard to their future. Children and young people not only have a role to play in the near and distant future, they also formulate their expectations in the present, and thus contribute to shaping the future (see e.g. Prince 2005 for young Hip Hop activists in Kenya and Shahine 2011 for the rising political engagement of youth during the so-called Arab Spring). In stressing in particular how the future is shaped and fought for by young Africans in contemporary contexts, we take up Jennifer Cole's and Deborah Durham's remark that the future is always projected-in the sense of "throwing forward", as well as in the sense of having a life "project" (2008: 21). With our particular view of children and young people as designers and negotiators of the future, we further follow Michaela Pelican's and Jan Patrick Heiss's interest in "making a future" and how it is "confronted and constructed through action" (2014: 7). This perspective does justice to a point which is essential in the context of future: change. Individual and collective images and ideas of how the future will be are not static, but are always embedded in political and economic conditions and social relations that are dynamic and can also be influenced by the actors themselves. This does not mean that the future has to be different from the present or the past per se; and negotiating the future does not necessarily mean breaking with existing orders or relations, for example between the generations. Rather, continuity is important on many levels. We understand continuity and change as an expression of dynamic negotiation processes, and it is these processes which seem to us to be central to an understanding of childhood, youth and future. All contributions to this volume engage with such dynamics. Senni Jyrkiäinen and Victoria Bisset discuss the significance of modern ideas of love in times of internet use among educated young people in urban Egypt; Sabrina M...
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