Urban Dreams: Transformations of Family Life in Burkina Faso

Description

Claudia Roth's work on Bobo-Dioulasso, a city of half a million residents in Burkina Faso, provides uniquely detailed insight into the evolving life-world of a West African urban population in one of the poorest countries in the world. Closely documenting the livelihood strategies of members of various neighbourhoods, Roth's work calls into question established notions of "the African family" as a solidary network, documents changing marriage and kinship relations under the impact of a persistent economic crisis, and explores the increasingly precarious social status of young women and men. CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction. Claudia Roth’s Work in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso Part I. Ethnography and Reflexivity Chapter 1. Culture Shock, Power and Knowledge: Negotiating Boundaries in Ethnographic Fieldwork Part II. Negotiating Love and Marriage Chapter 2. Beware When the Women of Bobo Dress Up! An Ethnographic Contribution Chapter 3. ‘What is Love?’ Changing Matrimony in Bobo-Dioulasso – A Case Study Chapter 4. Social Security and Gender: Marital Crisis as aMirror of the Economic Crisis Part III. Elderly Parents and Their Children: Sharing or Living in Poverty Chapter 5. Blood Ties as a Social Network: The African Extended Family as an Economic Association Chapter 6. The Invisible Impoverishment of the Elderly in Bobo-Dioulasso Chapter 7. ‘Shameful!’ The Inverted Intergenerational Contract in Bobo-Dioulasso Chapter 8. The Strength of Badenya Ties: Siblings and Social Security in Old Age – the Case of Urban Burkina Faso Part IV. Youth: Dreams and Hardships Chapter 9. Tea and Dreams: Men’s Generational Conflict in Bobo-Dioulasso Chapter 10. Between Dreams of Grandeur and Pragmatism: Young People in Urban Burkina Faso Publications of Claudia Roth Index