Description
Book SynopsisThis ethnography explores the links between a violent historical and political legacy, and the production of secrecy in everyday material culture. The focus is on Mende-speaking southeastern Sierra Leone and the surrounding region.
Trade Review"The world is currently quite aware of Sierra Leone and its predicament, and it needs this well-informed and beautifully written account of what makes the country so wonderful despite its woes. Ferme's work is truly transcendent, capturing magnificently well some of the most important aspects of an otherwise 'difficult' ethnographic case. It is a truthful and honest piece of work, based on a deep grasp of the ethnographer's craft." - Paul Richards, author of Fighting for the Rain Forest
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Immaterial Practices: Clues in a Modern Sierra Leonean
Landscape
INTERLUDE I: Weaving Cloth, Hair, and the Social World
2. Ambiguity and Gendered Practices
3. Strategies of Incorporation: Marriage and the Forms of
Dependence
INTERLUDE 2: Splitting Kola
4. The House of Impermanence and the Politics of Mobility
5. Becoming a Kpako: The Body and the Aesthetics of Power
INTERLUDE 3: Clay, Palm Oil, and Temporality
6. Children and Their Doubles
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
