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“W e live like chickens; we are just eating and sleeping” was often repeated to me by young men who were frustrated with their inability to achieve their aspirations. they contrasted a life of “eating and sleeping” or “simply sitting” with one that involves “progress.” living like chickens implies that life lacked meaning, simply moving here and there without any purpose besides filling one’s stomach. ideally most young men aspired to a life course consisting of a series of linear and incremental improvements. For the most part, however, young men were uncertain whether they would ever move out of their parents’ home and start their own families. even working youth often did not see their employment as a potential means of escaping their current situation, and many young men did not work because they believed available employment opportunities would not allow them to experience progress. in Chapter 2 i argue that through the consumption of khat and international films, young men constructed hopes for the future. Chewing khat and watching films allowed young men to negotiate an overabundance of unstructured time and reconstruct hopeful narratives in which they could move toward a desirable future. in this chapter i continue my exploration of the relationship between time and hope through an examination of young men’s specific values and aspirations. young men’s conceptions of progress shape the economic processes and forms of stratification that i describe in later chapters. education is often held to be the cornerstone of economic development and the reduction of poverty in the global south. ethnographic studies from a variety of regions have shown that although the implications of education for economic development are ambiguous, education certainly has a major impact 3 “We Live Like Chickens; We Are Just Eating and Sleeping” Progress, Education, and the Temporal Struggles of Young Men 68 Chapter 3 on young people’s aspirations and desires for the future (Demerath 2003; Jeffrey , Jeffery, and Jeffery 2008; Knauft 2002b; liechty 2003; stambach 2000; Willis 1977). in the global south, education is often associated with economic success and experiencing progress at an individual level. the model for economic success that emerges through education has a close relationship with modernist visions of development in the sense that it involves linear progression through time. this chapter begins with a general description of young men’s hopes for the future. the young men i spoke to sought to experience long-term progressive changes with the passage of time rather than what they considered temporary and fleeting pleasures in the present. i argue that the progressive nature of young men’s hopes is related to the expansion of formal education that began in ethiopia during the mid-twentieth century. the importance of education in securing employment and the intrinsically progressive nature of the education process led many young men to expect linear improvement in their lives. this is not simply the case of a modern institution associated with the West (secular education) producing values associated with Western notions of modernity (a desire for progress) in a non-Western context. ethnographic research demonstrates that what at first glance appear to be modern desires are better understood as local engagements with global discourses and institutions (Cole 2004; Demerath 2003; Hansen 2000; liechty 2003; stambach 2000). in the ethiopian case, although new values and worldviews certainly emerge among young men through their engagement with education, both the process in which these values are produced and the manner in which they are expressed are locally specific. progress and modernization are conceived of specifically in terms of social relationships, and the social nature of progress supports a novel conceptualization of time as relationships. young men in ethiopia seek to reposition themselves within relationships with the passage of time. the social category of youth is conceptually linked with processes of modernization in the sense that ideally it is a stage within a linear and progressive transformation from child to adult. young men struggle to transition beyond the social category of youth, as unemployment prevents them from establishing their own households. i argue that the movement from child to adult may be conceptualized in terms of a shift in one’s position within relations of reciprocity. the ethiopian case supports critical engagement with the anthropology of time and modernity. James Ferguson (2006) has usefully critiqued the recent proliferation of analyses of alternative modernities within anthropology. i agree with Ferguson that celebrations of alternative ways of being modern should not prevent an examination of...

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