Wednesday 12th October 12.-1.30pm
CIE Research Café seminar
In-person Essex House 19, University of Sussex, or online (details in this link)
Dr Elizabeth Cooper, School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Since 2008, hundreds of secondary schools across Kenya have been targeted with fire by their students. Through an in-depth study of Kenyan secondary students’ us e of arson, Elizabeth Cooper asks why. With insightful ethnographic analysis, she shows that these young students deploy arson as moral punishment for perceived injustices and arson proves an effective tactic in their politics from below. Drawing from years of research and a rich array of sources, Cooper accounts for how school fires stoke a national conversation about the limited means for ordinary Kenyans, and especially youth, to peacefully influence the governance of their own lives.
Further, Cooper argues that Kenyan students’ actions challenge the existing complacency with the globalised agenda of “education for all,” demonstrating that submissive despondency is not the only possible response to the failed promises of education to transform material and social inequalities.
Elizabeth Cooper is an anthropologist and associate professor in the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She has conducted research concerning children and youth, education, violence, and inequality, with a primary focus on Kenya, since 2003.