Overview

Highlights how culture, history, environment, and society intertwine in mineral resource conflicts in Africa, using Sierra Leone as a case study. In Culture and Conflicts in Sierra Leone Mining: Strangers, Aliens, Spirits, the author uses Sierra Leone as a case study to contribute to the debates on the causes and nature of mineral resource conflicts in Africa. Unlike many works that focus on the political economy and political ecology of large-scale diamond mining conflicts, this book’s goal is to add to the limited literature on the persistent discord in mining areas. In so doing, the book integrates cultural conflict dimensions in analysing the mineral commodity chain, primarily the clash between the centuries-old customary landlord-stranger land governance institution and state mining laws with colonial vestiges. It shows that these cultural conflicts challenge the effective development of the mining sector, including establishing artisanal mining as a viable complementary livelihood to farming for rural populations.

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9781839988097

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Reviews

“Dr. Fenda A. Akiwumi has crafted an original contribution to the literature on Sierra Leone’s incorporation into the global capitalist system through a skillful blend of the scholarly literature and data in the areas of anthropology, political economy, and cultural dynamics manifested in culture clash, coalescence, and unequal cultural exchange in the mining area. It is a very engaging, scholarly, and interesting volume that upper-class undergraduates and graduate students, researchers, and general readers will find very useful. It is a concise, but at the same time detailed, vivid, and rigorous portrayal of the several themes that are predicated on the interactive dynamics of traditionalism and modernity during colonial and postcolonial periods.” —Dr. Earl Conteh-Morgan, University of South Florida, USA. “Akiwumi delves deep into the cultural milieu in which competition for land and mining rights pitches the postcolonial state against customary authority. Only now do we see clearly that the fight over resources in Africa is stewed in the internal and external idioms of class, power, ethnicity, gender, nativity, identity, and spirituality.” —Raphael Njoku, Idaho State University, USA. “This book offers an original way of discussing environmental, political, and extractive issues in Sierra Leone and more broadly in West Africa. One can appreciate the author’s ‘first-hand knowledge’ by paying attention to details that only a few experts on Sierra Leone’s history and cultural dynamics can have.” —Lorenzo D’Angelo, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.

Author Information

Fenda A. Akiwumi is an environmental and social geographer whose research is at the intersection of the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, with an applied, policy, and community-engaged focus. Using an interdisciplinary, holistic approach, she interrogates the relationship between resource conflicts, cultural heritage, and sustainable mining development in Africa.

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