Disappointing modernisation: the peri-urban life of old women citizens

Abstract

This paper tells the narrative of Mrs. Mwanza who like many other women left her village during the first years of independence and joined her husband in Lusaka. Mrs. Mwanza was fully committed to urban life and embraced the prospects of modernity, but modernity did not bring the expected prosperity. While the focus is on how old people cope in the impoverished peri-urban area with everyday survival and changing family forms and generational obligations. Mrs. Mwanza’s memories are also about how she struggled to craft a meaningful citizenship in the local narrative of community. The paper is based on fieldwork containing innumerous talks with Mrs. Mwanza and other residents in George compound since 1968 up to 2010, and on a nationwide study of conditions of elderly people conducted in 2004. It grounds theoretical understandings by focusing on the gendered meaning of everyday spaces and how they are negotiated.