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Gaborone is Growing like a Baby: Life Expectancies and Death Expectations in Urban Botswana
Abstract
of successful development in the midst of tragedy. The article shows
how official discourses of development and death are appropriated by a younger generation in Gaborone, in ways unanticipated in a meta-narrative of modernity. The emotional anguish of an older generation is absent in a younger generation’s expectation that development goes hand-in-hand with funerals. The shift in perspective that is instantiated in Gaborone, reflects a profound transformation
in the relationship between the production of knowledge and the state’s
expanding capacity since independence in 1966. This study contributes to the literature on development, modernity, African cities and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.