The Sacrificed Generation: Youth, History, and the Colonized Mind in Madagascar

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University of California Press, Sep 3, 2002 - Social Science - 392 pages
Youth and identity politics figure prominently in this provocative study of personal and collective memory in Madagascar. A deeply nuanced ethnography of historical consciousness, it challenges many cross-cultural investigations of youth, for its key actors are not adults but schoolchildren. Lesley Sharp refutes dominant assumptions that African children are the helpless victims of postcolonial crises, incapable of organized, sustained collective thought or action.

She insists instead on the political agency of Malagasy youth who, as they decipher their current predicament, offer potent, historicized critiques of colonial violence, nationalist resistance, foreign mass media, and schoolyard survival. Sharp asserts that autobiography and national history are inextricably linked and therefore must be read in tandem, a process that exposes how political consciousness is forged in the classroom, within the home, and on the street in Madagascar.

Keywords: Critical pedagogy
 

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Contents

Youth and the Colonized Mind
29
REVOLUTION AND NATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS
30
LINGUISTIC HEGEMONY
40
PAST SACRIFICES
51
RECONFIGURING THE NATION
54
YOUTHFUL REFLECTIONS
62
The Perplexities of Urban Schooling Sacrifice Suffering and Survival
73
The Sacrificed Generation
77
Laboring for the Colony
195
A HISTORY OF FORCED LABOR
196
LA MENTALITÉ COLONIALE LA MENTALITÉ INDIGÈNE
205
Youth and the Nation Schooling and Its Perils
219
Girls and Sex and Other Urban Diversions
223
WORLDLY DIVERSIONS
228
THE IMMORALITY OF PLAY
238
The Social Worth of Children
252

ENCOUNTERING EXTREMES
79
AN AMBANJA EDUCATION
83
STATE IDEOLOGY AND PEDAGOGICAL PRAXIS
99
YOUTH AND THE POLITICS OF SCHOOLING
112
The Life and Hard Times of the School Migrant
114
THE TRIALS OF SCHOOL MIGRATION
115
THE TENUOUSNESS OF SCHOOL SUCCESS
132
ENVISIONING A FUTURE
139
Freedom Labor and Loyalty
151
The Resurgence of Royal Power
155
CONQUEST AND ROYAL RESISTANCE
165
ROYAL MODERN
169
Our Grandfathers Went to War
176
THE COLONIAL HUNGER FOR AFRICAN LABOR
177
CONQUEST CAPTURE AND ENSLAVEMENT
181
THE ABANDONED BODIES OF LOST ANCESTORS
183
COLONIAL RESISTANCE
186
LOST YOUTH
253
CHILDREN AND URBAN PROSPERITY
261
Youth in an Age of Nationalism
273
YOUTH AND MEMORY POLITICS
274
FUTURE DESIRES
280
A Guide to Key Informants
283
Population Figures for Madagascar 19001994
293
Population Figures for Ambanja and the Sambirano Valley
294
Schools in Ambanja and the Sambirano Valley
297
Enrollment Figures for Select Ambanja Schools
303
Bac Results at the StateRun Lycée Tsiraso I 19901994
309
NOTES
319
GLOSSARY
347
REFERENCES
353
INDEX
371
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About the author (2002)

Lesley A. Sharp is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and author of The Possessed and the Dispossessed: Spirits, Identity, and Power in a Madagascar Migrant Town (California, 1993).

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