Chapter 2: Narratives of Black Youth

This is an exploration of young, black urban South Africans' capacity to aspire. The purpose was to discover what maps of the future do the youths have and how their immediate environments in and out of school served as instruments that help them interpret the maps. The theoretical basis of this study was informed by Arjun Appadurai's (2004) conceptualization of the capacity to aspire. In conceptualizing the capacity to aspire, however, Appadurai does not give us much to go with beyond the surface level. He argues that the capacity to aspire is about looking at culture beyond past and present and more futuristically. It is also not an individual motivational trait, but rather shaped by society. It is informed by both the politics of hope and the ethics of possibility. Appadurai then proposes two important tools that could help realize the capacity to aspire; these are maps and navigational tools. We therefore do not have much more than this to go with in order to run with the concept. What makes it even more complex is that the context within which Appadurai conceptualized the capacity to aspire and mine differ. Appadurai conceptualized the concept in the context of adult slum dwellers in India and various other parts of the world as an instrument that could assist them ‘alter their terms of recognition’ (2004). It was meant for those in poverty and how they could take charge of their lives and extricate themselves from their position of poverty and degradation.