À partir de XXᵉ siècle
Africa
Traduction non disponible · Original (anglais) · français indisponible
A comparative social formation in which colonial and post-colonial institutions superimposed educational and bureaucratic status criteria upon older structures based on kinship, lineage, age, and sex. The resulting hierarchy included upper and middle classes, a proletariat, peasants, and a growing unemployed youth population. Formal education became a principal avenue of upward mobility, while restricted access to higher education and urban employment reinforced an “elite-mass” divide.
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Le récit
In the independent African states described here, colonial rule had left a new stratificational pattern superimposed upon traditional social structures. Earlier status distinctions had been associated with kinship, lineage, age, and sex, whereas bureaucratic roles introduced formal education as a new criterion of differentiation. Education rapidly became a passport to upward mobility, but the strata formed around it tended to harden rather than dissolve social divisions.
The model distinguishes five broad levels. The upper class, approximately one percent of the population, combined a bureaucratic-professional segment—including senior officials, military officers, lawyers, doctors, managers, and university teachers—with a commercial segment of large export farmers and major merchants. Below it stood a middle class of bureaucratic cadres, junior military personnel, teachers, and a petite bourgeoisie of small traders, usually self-employed and possessing little capital.
The working class or proletariat comprised skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled labourers and represented between five and eight percent of the population. Peasants, described as subsistence farmers, formed roughly 70 to 80 percent and were often illiterate, cultivating very small plots. A fifth stratum consisted of unemployed or unemployable primary-school leavers and drop-outs, whose growth after independence was linked to educational expansion and the limited capacity of the administrative state to provide suitable employment.
À partir de XXᵉ siècle
Africa
Traduction non disponible · Original (anglais) · français indisponible
A comparative social formation in which colonial and post-colonial institutions superimposed educational and bureaucratic status criteria upon older structures based on kinship, lineage, age, and sex. The resulting hierarchy included upper and middle classes, a proletariat, peasants, and a growing unemployed youth population. Formal education became a principal avenue of upward mobility, while restricted access to higher education and urban employment reinforced an “elite-mass” divide.
Poursuivre l’exploration
Le récit
In the independent African states described here, colonial rule had left a new stratificational pattern superimposed upon traditional social structures. Earlier status distinctions had been associated with kinship, lineage, age, and sex, whereas bureaucratic roles introduced formal education as a new criterion of differentiation. Education rapidly became a passport to upward mobility, but the strata formed around it tended to harden rather than dissolve social divisions.
The model distinguishes five broad levels. The upper class, approximately one percent of the population, combined a bureaucratic-professional segment—including senior officials, military officers, lawyers, doctors, managers, and university teachers—with a commercial segment of large export farmers and major merchants. Below it stood a middle class of bureaucratic cadres, junior military personnel, teachers, and a petite bourgeoisie of small traders, usually self-employed and possessing little capital.
The working class or proletariat comprised skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled labourers and represented between five and eight percent of the population. Peasants, described as subsistence farmers, formed roughly 70 to 80 percent and were often illiterate, cultivating very small plots. A fifth stratum consisted of unemployed or unemployable primary-school leavers and drop-outs, whose growth after independence was linked to educational expansion and the limited capacity of the administrative state to provide suitable employment.