The Culture Development Club: Youth, Neo-Tradition, and the Construction of Society in Guinea-Bissau

As members of a youth organization called the "Culture Development Club," young men of the Manjaco ethnic group in Guinea-Bissau respond to and try to manage what they perceive to be community collapse in the face of endemic demographic decline. "The Club" is a postcolonial institution whose history reflects the local appropriation of foreign formats. I suggest, however, that by looking at the various ways youth in the "club" enacted their theories of culture as an ongoing "tradition," we see youth's enduring centrality in the creation of Manjaco social relations.