Youth Gangs and Street Children Culture, Nurture and Masculinity in Ethiopia [Paperback]

The rapidly expanding population of youth gangs and street children is one of the most disturbing issues in many cities around the world. These children are perceived to be in a constant state of destitution, violence and vagrancy, and therefore must be a serious threat to society, needing heavy-handed intervention and tough love from concerned adults to impose societal norms on them and turn them into responsible citizens. However, such norms are far from the lived reality of these children. The situation is further complicated by gender-based violence and masculinist ideologies found in the wider Ethiopian culture, which influence the proliferation of youth gangs. By focusing on gender as the defining element of these childrens lives  as they describe it in their own words  this book offers a clear analysis of how the unequal and antagonistic gender relations that are tolerated and normalized by everyday school and family structures shape their lives at home and on the street.

Overall, Heinonen must be commended for tackling the complexities of the subject matter with tenacity and evident concern for the situation and condition of the lives of the people she observes. She does well to untangle the contradictions she encounters throughout.? ??Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Paula Heinonen has written a remarkable book that deserves a wide readership& Altogether I would highly recommend this book, and I hope it finds a readership well beyond the narrow disciplinary and geographical confines that scholarship from the south too often ends up in. Finally, the book underscores the value of long term, and fairly open-ended ethnographic research.? ??Children's Geographies

The authors relatively long period of field work enables her to follow-up on the longer term fates of the informants. Heinonen has taken great care to gather and categorise her data and tolãÑ