The Outcast Majority invites policymakers, practitioners, academics, students, and others to think about three commanding contemporary issues-war, development, and youth-in new ways. The starting point is the following irony: while African youth are demographically dominant, most see themselves as members of an outcast minority. The irony directly informs young people's lives in war-affected Africa, where differences separating the priorities of youth and those of international agencies are especially prominent.
Drawing on interviews with development experts and young people, Marc Sommers shines a light on this gap and offers guidance on how to close it. He begins with a comprehensive consideration of forces that shape and propel the lives of African youth today, particularly those experiencing or emerging from war. They are contrasted with forces that influence and constrain the international development aid enterprise. The book concludes with a framework for making development policies and practices significantly more relevant and effective for youth in areas affected by African wars and other places where vast and vibrant youth populations reside.
"Based on in-depth field interviews and qualitative research, The Outcast Majority presents a rich, nuanced, and counter-intuitive view of African young people scarred by conflict who have all too often been left behind by the international development project. The book's greatest strength is that Sommers lets young people tell their own life stories."
Andrew S. Natsios
"There exist collections of scholarship in food studies, of scholarship in southern studies in general, and of scholarship in southern food in particular, but no food studies collection I know of focuses mainly on methods. This is new and worthy of publication."
Ameya Naik, The Initiative for Policy Research and Analysis
"The book's greatest contribution lies in bringing together deep ethnographic work on conflict-affected youth in Africa and interviews with people in the aid world. Together, these details and voices demonstrate the mismatch between policy imperatives and the experiences and goals of young women and men across the African continent. The Outcast Majority distills decades of work on these issues and
Susan Shepler, Journal on Education in Emergencies
