This book examines diverse ways in which young people from around the world envision and prepare for their future education, careers, and families. The book features cutting-edge anthropological essays including ethnographic accounts of schooling in India, South Africa, the US, Bhutan, Tanzania, and Nigeria. Each chapter focuses on today's generation of students and on students' use of education to create new possibilities for themselves. This volume will be of particular interest to practicing teachers and anthropologists and to readers who seek an ethnographic understanding of the world as seen through the eyes of students.

Pragmatic Faith and the Tanzanian Lutheran Church: Bishop Erasto N. Kweka's Life and Work examines the operations and organization of the Tanzanian Lutheran church through the life and times of its longest serving diocesan bishop, Erasto N. Kweka. Amy Stambach and Aikande Kwayu develop the concept of pragmatic faith, belief-in-practice, to analyze the integration of religious experience, institutionalism, and doctrine or orthodoxy. Pragmatic faith breaks down the lingering binary found in anthropological studies of Christianity between transcendental experience and pragmatic struggle, and between religious revival as rupture or continuity. Stambach and Kwayu analyze the instrumental use of religion in practice, as well as its socially mobilized potential for revelation and transformation. A key analytic agenda of this book is to illuminate how a church that retains the organizational and ritual forms of a European mission church "became" culturally localized over time and yet, paradoxically, also existed pre-colonially. Accordingly, this book offers detailed and ethnographically-grounded perspective on how leaders and laypeople affiliated with the Tanzanian Lutheran church connect the church with other significant institutions, not only the state and the government, but also descent groups, extended families, self-help groups, and existing civic organizations, in order to live meaningfully.

China's investment in U.S. higher education has raised considerable debate, but little research has been directed to the manner in which this investment unfolds and takes shape on the ground in local contexts. Confucius and Crisis in American Universities fills this gap by closely investigating how Chinese-funded U.S. programs are understood and configured in the modern American university. Drawing on interviews with Chinese teachers and their American students, as well as conversations with university administrators, this book argues that Chinese investment in American higher education serves as a broad form of global policy, harnessing the power of intercultural exchange as a means of managing international diplomatic relations through the experiences of university students. A transnational study, Confucius and Crisis in American Universities questions and reframes conventional notions of economic globalization and flexible citizenship, demonstrating how Chinese investment in U.S. education advances the lives of the already-privileged by creating access to overseas labor and markets, but to the exclusion of middle- and working-class students. A valuable and timely resource for scholars of education and anthropology, this book will also be useful to anyone interested in education policy or international affairs.

An ethnographic study of a school and community in East Africa focusing on the role school plays in the development of the children's identity and relationships to their parents and community, as well as in the development of the region.

Sambach brings together an ethnograhic study of a school and community in East Africa. Stambach focuses on the role school plays in the development of the children's identity and relationships to their parents and community, as well as in the development of the region. At issue here are the competing influences of Western modernity and the cultural traditions of East Africa-ideas about gender roles, sexuality, identity, and family and communal obligations are all at stake. Stambach looks at the controversial practice of female circumcision in the context of school and community teachings about girls' bodies and examines cultural signifiers like music, clothing and food to discuss the tensions in the region.

American Evangelicals have long considered Africa a welcoming place for joining faith with social action, but their work overseas is often ambivalently received. Even among East African Christians who share missionaries' religious beliefs, understandings vary over the promises and pitfalls of American Evangelical involvement in public life and schools. In this first-hand account, Amy Stambach examines missionary involvement in East Africa from the perspectives of both Americans and East Africans.
While Evangelicals frame their work in terms of spreading Christianity, critics see it as destroying traditional culture. Challenging assumptions on both sides, this work reveals a complex and ever-evolving exchange between Christian college campuses in the U.S., where missionaries train, and schools in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Providing real insight into the lives of school children in East Africa, this book charts a new course for understanding the goals on both sides and the global connections forged in the name of faith.

American Evangelicals have long considered Africa a welcoming place for joining faith with social action, but their work overseas is often ambivalently received. Even among East African Christians who share missionaries' religious beliefs, understandings vary over the promises and pitfalls of American Evangelical involvement in public life and schools. In this first-hand account, Amy Stambach examines missionary involvement in East Africa from the perspectives of both Americans and East Africans.
While Evangelicals frame their work in terms of spreading Christianity, critics see it as destroying traditional culture. Challenging assumptions on both sides, this work reveals a complex and ever-evolving exchange between Christian college campuses in the U.S., where missionaries train, and schools in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Providing real insight into the lives of school children in East Africa, this book charts a new course for understanding the goals on both sides and the global connections forged in the name of faith.