The Powerful Presence of the Past

Integration and Conflict Along the Upper Guinea Coast
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-90-04-19000-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 24, 378 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 635 g

Reihe: African Social Studies Series

This 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.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in processes of integration and conflict, the anthropology and history of Africa, postcolonial societies, and political anthropology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Knörr, Jacqueline

Trajano Filho, Wilson

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Ethnopsychologie, Kulturpsychologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

CONTENTS

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

Über Autor(innen)

Trajano Filho, Wilson
Wilson Trajano Filho (PhD 1998, University of Pennsylvania) is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Brasilia in Brasil. His research concentrates on processes of creolization, the role of creole groups in nation-building, the history of (Portuguese) colonialism and popular culture in Africa and Brazil. He has published widely on these themes and has conducted extensive field research in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome.

Knörr, Jacqueline
Jacqueline Knörr (PhD 1994, Bayreuth; Habilitation 2006, Halle/Saale) is an anthropologist and head of the research group “Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. She has done extensive field research in West Africa, Indonesia and Germany and has published widely on identity in postcolonial contexts, creolization and creoleness, childhood and migration, initiation and identity, and on expatriate communities. Regionally her research focusses on West Africa, Indonesia and Germany

Jacqueline Knörr (PhD 1994, Bayreuth; Habilitation 2006, Halle/Saale) is an anthropologist and head of the research group “Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. She has done extensive field research in West Africa, Indonesia and Germany and has published widely on identity in postcolonial contexts, creolization and creoleness, childhood and migration, initiation and identity, and on expatriate communities. Regionally her research focusses on West Africa, Indonesia and Germany

Wilson Trajano Filho (PhD 1998, University of Pennsylvania) is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Brasilia in Brasil. His research concentrates on processes of creolization, the role of creole groups in nation-building, the history of (Portuguese) colonialism and popular culture in Africa and Brazil. He has published widely on these themes and has conducted extensive field research in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome.