'Yolo so party like a Swazi': youth and digital space
Date
2016
Authors
Bruneau, Kristiana
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Abstract
There is a culture arising among young people in Swaziland that believes that to
be young and Swazi is an ephemeral, temporary, and directionless existence, and having
sex and ‘partying like a Swazi’ is desired, celebrated and the fashion. I illustrate that this
construction is a reaction to the banal, routine and regulation of their social spaces.
Furthermore, in addition to the spaces being limited in number, imbued within each are
structures and routines that reproduce discourses that privilege performances surrounding
their normative behaviour and development (including the development of their
sexualities). As a result, Swazi society has excluded young people from being active
agents in the very discourses that govern and inform their lives, status, agency and
citizenship.
Drawing from a phenomenological analysis of WhatsApp conversations
combined with fieldwork in Swaziland, this dissertation explores the locality of digital
space via WhatsApp in the landscape of the lives of Swazi young. The data illustrated
that digital space is residual and resistive, as a reaction to the regulated and restricted
spaces in their lives, in digital space young people enact performances of masculinity,
secrecy and morality. As well as determined values systems and currencies around sex
(and sexual status), vis a vis the exchange of social capital (nude and semi nude photos)-
all of which are inherently self destructive. Lastly, in their resistance, Swazi young
people are the local agents of their self-destruction
Description
University of the Witwatersrand
A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Arts by Coursework in the Department of Social Anthropology
July 5, 2016
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Citation
Bruneau, Kristiana (2016) 'Yolo so party like a Swazi': youth and digital space, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, <http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/21970>