Abidjan Youths’ “Grazing” Occult Economies: A Cultural Dialectic of Generational Change
Koenig, Boris
Abidjan Youths’ “Grazing” Occult Economies: A Cultural Dialectic of Generational Change - 2015.
99
Combining online self-presentation tactics and witchcraft, “grazing” has become widely popular during the last decade in the metropolis of Abidjan as a means favoured by young men to compensate for a social context characterized by endemic underemployment. Based on a description of online and offline social interactions related to accumulation processes, this paper highlights the regeneration of social and cultural forms that underlie lucrative but illicit new uses of digital communication technologies by the young “grazers”. Using ethnographic data collected on the field in Abidjan in 2012, this contribution argues that through defining new paths towards social adulthood in a time of economic austerity, the young followers of these accumulation processes act as a catalyst of generational change.
Abidjan Youths’ “Grazing” Occult Economies: A Cultural Dialectic of Generational Change - 2015.
99
Combining online self-presentation tactics and witchcraft, “grazing” has become widely popular during the last decade in the metropolis of Abidjan as a means favoured by young men to compensate for a social context characterized by endemic underemployment. Based on a description of online and offline social interactions related to accumulation processes, this paper highlights the regeneration of social and cultural forms that underlie lucrative but illicit new uses of digital communication technologies by the young “grazers”. Using ethnographic data collected on the field in Abidjan in 2012, this contribution argues that through defining new paths towards social adulthood in a time of economic austerity, the young followers of these accumulation processes act as a catalyst of generational change.
Réseaux sociaux