Hope Is Cut

How do ambitious young men in urban Ethiopia grapple with an unemployment rate hovering around 50 percent? Urban, educated, and unemployed young men have been the primary force behind the recent revolutions and unrest in North Africa and the Middle East. In this detailed and moving ethnographic study, Daniel Mains examines young men's struggles to keep hope for the future in the midst of economic uncertainty and cultural globalization and addresses the importance of reciprocity and international migration as a means of overcoming the barriers to achieving aspirations. Book jacket.

Daniel Mains is Wick Cary Assistant Professor of Honors at the University of Oklahoma.