Quranic Schools in Northern Nigeria: Everyday Experiences of Youth, Faith, and Poverty

· The International African Library Book 54 · Cambridge University Press
Ebook
293
Pages
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More

About this ebook

In a global context of widespread fears over Islamic radicalisation and militancy, poor Muslim youth, especially those socialised in religious seminaries, have attracted overwhelmingly negative attention. In northern Nigeria, male Qur'anic students have garnered a reputation of resorting to violence in order to claim their share of highly unequally distributed resources. Drawing on material from long-term ethnographic and participatory fieldwork among Qur'anic students and their communities, this book offers an alternative perspective on youth, faith, and poverty. Mobilising insights from scholarship on education, poverty research and childhood and youth studies, Hannah Hoechner describes how religious discourses can moderate feelings of inadequacy triggered by experiences of exclusion, and how Qur'anic school enrolment offers a way forward in constrained circumstances, even though it likely reproduces poverty in the long run. A pioneering study of religious school students conducted through participatory methods, this book presents vital insights into the concerns of this much-vilified group.

About the author

Hannah Hoechner is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp and a research associate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford and has conducted extensive ethnographic research in Nigeria, Senegal, and the US. Her work has been published in Africa, Children's Geographies, Qualitative Research, the International Journal for Social Research Methodology, the European Journal of Development Research, and Afrique Contemporaine. As part of her work in Nigeria, she has produced the participatory docu-drama 'Duniya Juyi Juyi – How Life Goes', which won the AFRICAST 2012 Special Award 'Participatory Video for Development'.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.