Youth, globalisation, and millennial reflection in a Guinean forest town

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a surge in studies of youth culture and social practice. In Africa, as elsewhere, this body of youth-centred research and writing has devoted considerable attention to specific groups within a given country's young population, while largely neglecting others seen to lack either culturally innovative or politically subversive traits. Youths in large cities and young combatants involved in insurgency or counter-insurgency have shared centre stage in studies of youthful Africa. This article argues for broadening the research agenda of African youth studies, calling for increased attention to the interpretive work performed by provincial youths as they try to understand and hopefully alter the future prospects of their communities in the new century. It shows how ideas about the meanings of globalisation and ‘the millennium’, intertwined with experiences of a recent refugee ‘crisis’, are shaping Guinean youths' socio-political reflections and yearnings. In doing so, it stresses just how complicated and cosmopolitan ‘provincial’ life, particularly for young people, has become in Guinea's forest region, as well as the variety and sophistication of the historical ‘materials’ and interpretive schemes through which these youths depict and judge possible local futures.