Generating Rebels And Soldiers: On The Socio-Economic Crisis Of Rural Youth In Sierra Leone Before The War

Peters, Krijn

doi:10.1163/ej.9789004190009.i-375.124

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…But, as Mohammed explains here: ‘If I borrowed money from [my boss], I'd be frightened to leave him in case he took me to court’. In the Sierra Leonean moral imagination, there is long‐standing ambivalence about the potential of patrons to abuse their power (Ferme ; Peters ), and crewmen are acutely aware of how easily debt can become a route into exploitation and bonded labour (Diggins ). In conversation, people often described crewmen who were indebted to their boss‐man as being ‘like slaves’.…”

Section: Making Kustoment Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent ethnography in Sierra Leone has revealed how often patronage relations are characterized by a level of domination and control that recalls social memories of domestic slavery (Peters ). In Tissana, one result of this legacy is that people's experience of receiving and reciprocating gifts is often entangled with anxieties about the potential for entrapment (Diggins ; ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Collapsing fish stocks, gendered economies, and anxieties of entrapment in coastal Sierra Leone

Diggins

2019

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the economic negotiations between Sierra Leonean fishermen and the women who compete to buy their fish, tracing how relationships of gendered intimacy and interdependence are being reconfigured in a context of deepening economic precarity. Fish stocks in Sierra Leone are in crisis. Fisherfolk look back with nostalgia to a past in which bountiful harvests had made it possible for transactions of fish to be simple and impersonal. Today, by contrast, it is almost impossible for women to access fish without working to develop strong personal relationships with fishermen: deploying gifts of food, loans of money, and even secret 'medicines' to secure the loyalty of potential customers. I analyse how men and women reflect on their growing impoverishment through discourses that emphasize their moral ambivalence at being drawn back into webs of interpersonal dependency, and argue that these anxieties need to be understood in the context of Sierra Leone's history of domestic slavery.

show abstract

Section: Making Kustoment Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Collapsing fish stocks, gendered economies, and anxieties of entrapment in coastal Sierra Leone

Diggins

2019

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some fundamental texts in this scholarly literature (explicitly or implicitly confi rming this political pattern) include, to cite just a few from a voluminous list, Abdullah (2003), Peters (2011), Pham (2004Pham ( , 2006, Reno (1995Reno ( , 1998 and Richards (1996 and and Utas (2005aUtas ( , 2005bUtas ( , 2012; also see McGovern (2011) on the interrelated civil war in Côte d'Ivoire. Th e locus classicus for conceptualizing key institutional features of this political form is Weber's (1978: Chap.…”

Section: Patrimonial Patronage In Civil Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Peters 2007 and. Th e postconfl ict narrative of the motorbike trade includes episodes of big men using their patronage power to treat ex-combatants as little more than serfs who are dependent upon patronage resources to gain access to a motorbike and a share in the business.…”

Section: Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective

Knörr¹,

Kohl²

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Th e objective of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is to advance anthropological fi eldwork and enhance theory building. 'Integration' and 'confl ict', the central themes of this series, are major concerns of the contemporary social sciences and of signifi cant interest to the general public. Th ey have also been among the main research areas of the institute since its foundation. Bringing together international experts, Integration and Confl ict Studies includes both monographs and edited volumes, and off ers a forum for studies that contribute to a better understanding of processes of identifi cation and inter-group relations. All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Volume 1 How Enemies are Made: Towards a Th eory of Ethnic and Religious Confl icts Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Knörr, Jacqueline, 1960-editor. | Kohl, Christoph, editor. In MemoriamTh is book is dedicated to the memory of Christian Kordt Højbjerg (1961Højbjerg ( -2014.Christian was an associate professor at the University of Aarhus (Denmark) and a long-time member of the research group 'Integration and Confl ict along the Upper Guinea Coast' at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany.After studying at the University of Aarhus, Christian did graduate work at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales before obtaining his Ph.D. and his Habilitation in anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. His areas of specialization included Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire and Mauritius. He published extensively on a range of subjects, including historical memory, ritual and social organization, confl ict and emergent political orders, identity and diff erence, and the role of refl exivity in shaping both social change and theoretical change.Th roughout his work, Christian demonstrated mastery of many skills: he was a dedicated ethnographer, a critical and in-depth analyst, an inspirational teacher, a compassionate man and a fi ne scholar with an open and active mind. As a member of our research group, Christian made a great and valuable contribution to our work. We have lost a wonderful friend and colleague whom we will miss and keep in our hearts and minds as an inspiration for our lives and research.On behalf of all contributors to this book and the members, associates and friends of the Research Group 'Integration and Confl ict along the Upper Guinea Coast' at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, List of Maps and Figures Maps Rio Pongo 23 Border of Liberia and Guinea 260Figures 6.1 (1) Internal migration routes and internal migration incentives; (2) irregular migration ship/zodiac routes from West Africa. 122 6.2Tentative inclusion...

show abstract

“…Other studies have focused on ex-combatants disarmed and reintegrated at an earlier period (cf. Peters andRichards 1998a, 1998b;Shepler 2005). Susan Shepler's thesis, based on fieldwork from the period 1999-2001, makes it clear that war is a resource over which many vested interests struggle.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Conclusion: The RUF as a Rural Underclass Project

Peters¹,

Kitchen²

2011

War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone The armed conflict in Sierra Leone and the extreme violence of the main rebel faction-the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)-have challenged scholars and members of the international community to come up with explanations. Up to this point, though, conclusions about the nature of the war and the RUF are mainly drawn from accounts of civilian victims or based on interpretations and rationalisations offered by commentators who had access to only one side of the war. The present study addresses this currently incomplete understanding of the conflict by focusing on the direct experiences and interpretations of protagonists, paying special attention to the hitherto neglected, and often underage, cadres of the RUF. The data presented challenge the widely canvassed notion of the Sierra Leone conflict as a war motivated by 'greed, not grievance'. Rather, it points to a rural crisis expressed in terms of unresolved tensions between landowners and marginalised rural youth-an unaddressed crisis of youth that currently manifests itself in many African countries-further reinforced and triggered by a collapsing patrimonial state. Krijn Peters, a rural development sociologist by background, is a lecturer in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University, Wales. He specialises in armed conflict and postwar reconstruction, focusing primarily on the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of child soldiers and youthful combatants. Peters is the co-author of War and Children (2009) and a Visiting Fellow at VU University, Amsterdam. Introduction 1 1 Voices from the Battlefield: Ex-Combatants' Views on Root Causes of the War and Their Reasons for Participation 18 2 The SocioEconomic Crisis of Rural Youth 34

show abstract

Generating Rebels And Soldiers: On The Socio-Economic Crisis Of Rural Youth In Sierra Leone Before The War

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Collapsing fish stocks, gendered economies, and anxieties of entrapment in coastal Sierra Leone

Collapsing fish stocks, gendered economies, and anxieties of entrapment in coastal Sierra Leone

The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective

Conclusion: The RUF as a Rural Underclass Project

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About