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“Culture Stops Development!”: Bijagó Youth and the Appropriation of Developmentalist Discourse in Guinea-Bissau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

Lorenzo I. Bordonaro
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Abstract:

Since the 1960s scholars have criticized the notion of development, arguing that the rhetoric and practice of international development serve imperialistic interests, destroying local orders and colonizing consciousnesses. Through the analysis of the “will to be modern” of a group of young boys living in Bubaque in the Bijagó Islands (Guinea-Bissau), this article shows how the very notion of development can be reworked and employed in an African context, becoming a means for exerting social demands against traditional authorities, and an idiom to express aspirations, needs, and rights.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , September 2009 , pp. 69 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2009

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