The study of childhood has been dominated by the field of psychology but a robust tradition in anthropology, dating at least to Mead’s (1928/1961) Coming of Age in Samoa, calls attention to the culture-bound flaw in psychology. Mead’s work undermined the claim by psychologist G. Stanley Hall that stress was inevitably part of adolescence. Less well known was Malinowski’s earlier critique of Freud’s Oedipal theory based on fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands (Malinowski 1927/2012). Universal stage theories of cognitive development, such as that of Jean Piaget, met a similar fate when cross-cultural comparative studies demonstrated profound and unpredicted influences of culture and school attendance (Greenfield 1966; Lancy and Strathern 1981; Lancy 1983). Ochs and Schieffelin’s (1984) analysis of adult–child language interaction also showed that ethnographic studies in non-Western societies could be used to “de-universalize” claims made in mainstream developmental psychology. Bob LeVine has taken on one of psychology’s most sacred cows, mother–infant attachment (see also Scheper-Hughes 1987a).

“Change Agents: Youths and Politics” examines the contribution of youths, active and otherwise, to Nigerian politics, and eventually to the development of its society as young people are variously described as strong, virile, and teachable, and generally have longer lifespans. However, the increase in unemployment, poverty, lack of access to education and health facilities etc., are factors that suppresses the productivity of the Nigerian youths. These factors also endanger the progress and peace of the nation in general, as the burgeoning rise in the number of youths unengaged is a threat to the stability and progress of the nation. Hence, structured care and training for the young yields profit in the form of self-actualization for the individual, and growth and stability for the family unit and the country. When youths are strengthened with the necessary education, healthcare, and other interventions for optimal growth, the nation is on a path to collective development. Also, this discourse examines the (paradoxical) relation of the youths to the development of the nation: how the meaningful involvement of the youth with Nigerian politics is hindered, denied, or overlooked; how Nigerian youths are exploited as mechanisms by the elites to perpetrate political violence; and how government policies continue to result in political apathy among the youths despite being the larger percentage of the nation’s population.