Description
Book SynopsisThis book conceptualizes integration and conflict as interrelated dimensions of social interaction, social relationships and alliances, identifications and identity constructions within society at large. In order to reach an in-depth understanding of integrative and violent forms of interaction in the region of the Upper Guinea Coast, authors take into account the impact and repercussions of specific historical experiences as well as the continuities and changes of social patterns affected by the interaction of local and globalized values, institutions, and models of social organization. Rather than providing an(other) analysis of wars and violence as such, contributors aim at a better understanding of the social mechanisms that affect both the processes of integration and conflict at the local, national and regional levels.
Trade ReviewIn: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18:2, 466-510 '.......The chapters (by anthropologists David Berliner, James Fairhead, Christian Højbjerg, William Murphy, Krijn Peters, Ramon Sarró, Susan Shepler, and Elizabeth Tonkin, and historians Stephen Ellis, Bruce Mouser, Peter Mark, and Jodi Tomàs, plus the editors) are individually strong. Important new insights are frequent. Among the highlights on the anthropological side is a splendid essay by Ramon Sarró showing that identity among the Baga of the coast of Guinea is at any one point in time the product of temporally and spatially variable processes of social incorporation and exclusion. This should be mandatory reading for any manipulator of a ‘large N’ conflict data set inclined to code ‘ethnicity’ as a single variable. Excellent contributions by the historians include an especially significant chapter by Stephen Ellis on Liberian politics, since it expands and modifies his widely discussed earlier arguments about violence and the occult. Space excludes further discussion of admirable contributions by Wilson Trajano Filho, Bruce Mouser, Krin Peters, and others, but it is safe to say that no anthropologist or historian interested in modern Africa or armed conflict and violence will want to be without this collection'...... Paul Richards Wageningen University and Research Centre,
Table of ContentsCONTENTS List of Maps Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction Jacqueline Knörr & Wilson Trajano Filho (PRE-)COLONIAL LEGACIES Patrimonial Logic of Centrifugal Forces in the Political History of the Upper Guinea Coast William P. Murphy Insurrection as Socioeconomic Change: Three Rebellions in Guinea/Sierra Leone in the Eighteenth Century Bruce Mouser Kouankan and the Guinea-Liberian Border James Fairhead A Saucy Town? Regional Histories of Conflict, Collusion, and Commerce in the Making of a Southeastern Liberian Polity Elizabeth Tonkin ‘Traditional’ Jola Peacemaking: From the Perspectives of an Historian and an Anthropologist Peter Mark & Jordi Tomàs REVISITING THE POLITICS OF ELITE CULTURE The Creole Idea of Nation and its Predicaments: The Case of Guinea-Bissau Wilson Trajano Filho The Mutual Assimilation of Elites: The Development of Secret Societies in Twentieth Century Liberian Politics Stephen Ellis Out of Hiding? Strategies of Empowering the Past in the Reconstruction of Krio Identity Jacqueline Knörr THE POWER AND POLITICS OF MEMORIES Map and Territory: The Politics of Place and Autochthony among Baga Sitem (and their Neighbours) Ramon Sarró The Invention of Bulongic Identity (Guinea-Conakry) David Berliner Victims and Heroes: Manding Historical Imagination in a Conflict-ridden Border Region (Liberia-Guinea) Christian K. Højbjerg CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN INTERGENERATIONAL AND GENDER RELATIONS Are ‘Child Soldiers’ in Sierra Leone a New Phenomenon? Susan Shepler Generating Rebels and Soldiers: On the Socio-Economic Crisis of Rural Youth in Sierra Leone before the War Krijn Peters Index
