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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Clothing and community: children's agency in Senegal's School for Sons of Chiefs and Interpreters, 1892-1910
Author:Duke Bryant, KellyISNI
Year:2014
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies (ISSN 0361-7882)
Volume:47
Issue:2
Pages:239-258
Language:English
Geographic terms:Senegal
France
Subjects:colonial administration
schools
students
school uniforms
group identity
social status
Abstract:The paper raises questions such as how French officials and African students negotiated aspects of the quotidian within the colonial school and what the implications were of the disjuncture between French rules and expectations and the conduct of the African students. To what extent were students able to challenge school or government officials effectively on the issues that most directly had an impact on them? What might these challenges tell the reader about colonial schooling or the practice of colonial rule? The article explores these questions and others by focussing on ordinary student behaviour and small-scale disobedience at the School for Sons of Chiefs and Interpreters during its second period of operation, around the turn of the twentieth century. Social relationships and clothing -two sets of mundane practices that formed a basis for personal identity and sense of self- were areas in which students chose to transgress French regulations or disregard their concerns. These actions are significant not only for what they reveal about young people's agency and identity politics, but also as an example of how Africans could highlight the limitations of the colonial state. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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