Connecting-Africa | Find publications

Advanced search

Find:


Title Gaborone is Growing like a Baby: Life Expectancies and Death Expectations in Urban Botswana
Full text http://ajol.info/index.php/ad/article/view/57303
Date 2010
Author(s) MS Ritsema
Abstract This article examines the paradox of Botswana's twin reputations: first, successful national development and second, premature death from the HIV/AIDS epidemic. While locating these reputations in the capital city, Gaborone, the article analyzes reflections of people who are themselves the audience for, and participants in, the country's development. Ethnographic data reveal a dramatic shift in discourse by generational cohort in terms of explaining the apparent contradictionof successful development in the midst of tragedy. The article showshow official discourses of development and death are appropriated by a younger generation in Gaborone, in ways unanticipated in a meta-narrative of modernity. The emotional anguish of an older generation is absent in a younger generation's expectation that development goes hand-in-hand with funerals. The shift in perspective that is instantiated in Gaborone, reflects a profound transformationin the relationship between the production of knowledge and the state'sexpanding capacity since independence in 1966. This study contributes to the literature on development, modernity, African cities and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Language en
Publisher Africa Development
Type of publication Peer-reviewed Article
Format application/pdf
Source Africa Development; Vol 33, No 3 (2008)
Rights Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the journal.
Repository Africa - African Journals OnLine (AJOL)
Added to C-A: 2010-08-26;09:03:22