ブックタイトル佐藤栄作　受賞論文集

概要

佐藤栄作　受賞論文集

第25回優秀賞images of angry young men from the global South. 3Unfortunately, these imageshave come to dominate international media coverage. From reports of the savageryof young soldiers in various civil wars, to images of African cities with young menoverflowing onto the streets without work, desperate and dangerously dissatisfied,young people are portrayed as victims, unable to choose their future paths and forcedinto behaviour that is damaging, both for society and for their own lives. Such reports,which shape the way we think about poverty in Africa, contribute to the sense ofhopelessness in addressing its many challenges.Youth as an engine of changeWhile there is no doubt a strong link between poverty, youth delinquency andviolence, we need to critically examine the perceptions held by the international publicof African youth as victimized and as a threat to stability and development. In the eraof decolonisation that followed the end of the Second World War, young people wereheld up as the future of many African societies. Amid the burgeoning nationalismof the 1950s and 1960s, youth were seen to have an important role in buildingprosperous new societies newly freed from the chains of colonialism. There werechances for young people to both challenge existing power structures and to developtheir own visions for the future (Burgess 2005: xv). This role was often encouragedby the nationalist leaders of the time who saw a need to generate a powerful senseof community and shared destiny among their populations. These leaders, such asKwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, saw the need to harnessthe creative energies of young people as part of their new plans for economic, politicaland social transformation.3 For a sustained critique of the youth bulge theory see Hendrixson (2004).701