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Through the eyes of northern Nigerian Qur'anic students, this book explores what it truly means to be young, poor, and Muslim.
List of contents
List of figures; List of maps; List of tables; Acknowledgements; Notes on translation and anonymization; 1. Porridge, piety, and patience: Qur'anic schooling in northern Nigeria; 2. Fair game for unfair accusations? Discourses about Qur'anic students; 3. 'Secular schooling is schooling for the rich!' Inequality and educational change in northern Nigeria; 4. Peasants, privations, and piousness: how boys become Qur'anic students; 5. Inequality at close range: domestic service for the better-off; 6. Concealment, asceticism, and cunning Americans: how to deal with being poor? 7. Mango medicine and morality: pursuing a respectable position within society; 8. Spiritual security services in an insecure setting: Kano's 'prayer economy'; 9. Roles, risks, and reproduction: what almajiri education implies for society and for the future; Glossary; Abbreviations; Annex: synopsis 'Duniya Juyi Juyi - How Life Goes'; Bibliography; Index.
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'.
Summary
An ethnographic study of Qur'anic schools in northern Nigeria that debunks stereotypes about such schools being recruitment grounds for Boko Haram and other violent groups. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Hannah Hoechner explores through the eyes of students the true nature of being young, poor, and Muslim in a context of pervasive inequality.
