Reconceptualising temporality in young lives: exploring young people's current and future livelihoods in AIDS‐affected southern Africa

Abstract

In recent years, anxieties have been expressed that the impacts of southern Africa's AIDS pandemic on young people today will damage their future livelihood prospects. Geographers have been remarkably reluctant to explore young people's future livelihoods, inspired by a concern to view young people as human beings, worthy of study in their own right rather than mere human becomings, of interest only as ‘adults in the making’. Yet there is growing acknowledgement that young people, like older people, are always both ‘being and becoming’. The connections between current and future lives merit much greater attention, both because experiences and actions in childhood and youth undoubtedly shape the futures of individuals and wider society, but also because young people's thoughts and actions are so often geared to the future, and this future orientation shapes their present worlds. This paper reports on research that set out to explore links between the impacts of AIDS and young people's livelihood prospects. Intensive case study research was undertaken, combining participatory methods and life history interviews with young people aged 10–24 in two villages, one in southern Malawi and the other in the mountains of Lesotho. By theorising a temporal dimension to de Haan and Zoomers’ concept of livelihood trajectories, the paper focuses on the ways in which young people respond to both the immediate sustenance requirements of themselves and their households and their need to accrue assets for future livelihoods. Some young people's trajectories appear to be disturbed by the influence of AIDS, but with no systematic patterns. Beyond addressing empirical questions concerning the impacts of AIDS, the paper contributes to our understanding of how livelihoods are produced and to the conceptualisation of youth transitions as produced through the iteration of present and future.

‘Generationing’ Development

“…The articles demonstrate that each life phase is constructed relationally to others, as well as to external context and to other generations. This connects with emerging work that explores the temporalities of young lives in connection with their roles in social reproduction (see Ansell et al, 2013).…”

New knowledge on children and young people: A Synthesis of Evidence from the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research

“…The former demonstrated a sophisticated appreciation of the asymmetrical power relations that characterise work with children, especially those at risk of being affected by HIV/AIDs or in impoverished environments. Ethical issues concerning children affected by HIV/AIDS were specifically singled out, and specific training on 'research ethics in practice' was given to all enumerators and researchers in the project (Ansell, 2007;Ansell et al, 2014).…”

“…In poor rural households, earnings commonly went towards general household expenses; urban and peri-urban area children reported using the money as pocket money for sweets, snacks and watching videos (Porter et al, 2012). Ansell et al (2014) indicate that some boys in Lesotho were either choosing for themselves or were being directed by their families to work as herd-boys, a livelihood pathway with the potential for accumulating assets (livestock).…”

Uncertain futures and everyday hedging in a humanitarian city

“…Despite their variety of cultural forms, mediations of the uncertain future are laborious (Ansell et al . ; Bear ), affecting (Miyazaki ; Zaloom ) and socially and economically generative (Bear ; Pederson ).…”

“…Some of this work draws parallels to well-worn anthropological concern with prophecy, witchcraft, magic and divinationall considered as fields of expertise that help to account for the unforeseen, or, in other words, for the imperviousness of the future to human knowledge (Bear 2014(Bear 2015Graeber 2012;Holloway 2014;Niehaus 2013;Piot 2010). Despite their variety of cultural forms, mediations of the uncertain future are laborious (Ansell et al 2013;Bear 2014), affecting (Miyazaki 2006Zaloom 2004) and socially and economically generative (Bear 2015;Pederson 2012).…”