Overview

The essayists whose work is collected here - historians, anthropologists, and political scientists - bring their diverse disciplinary perspectives to bear on various forms of violence that have plagued recent African history. Exploring violence as part of political economy and rejecting stereotypical explanations of African violence as endemic or natural to African cultures, the essays examine a continent where the boundaries on acceptable force are always shifting and the distinction between violence by the state and against the state is not always clear.

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9780813925776

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By focusing on the participation and consequences for ordinary people, this collection offers a fresh perspective on the eruption of violence in sub-Saharan Africa. None of the contributions takes the easy way out - either by claiming any special propensity of Africans to violence, or by calling attention to titillating aspects of the violence itself. Rather, they offer 'thick descriptions' of particular violent episodes to develop their contexts and the larger causes that made them happen. The case studies, drawn from field research in Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, search for the meaning of specific instances of collective violence to the individuals caught up in them. - Nelson Kasfir, Dartmouth College This coherently assembled set of contributions illuminates crucial aspects of the disorder and insecurity afflicting much of contemporary Africa. The potent social force of a marginalized youth generation is explored in its different manifestations in a variety of settings by an excellent roster of scholars. - Crawford Young, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison Unmatched in its ethnographic depth and attention to critical dimensions of African conflicts.... This volume cuts across the continent and across several intertwining themes to provide highly contextual analyses within a well-defined framework. - Catherine Besteman, Colby College, editor of Violence: A Reader

By focusing on the participation and consequences for ordinary people, this collection offers a fresh perspective on the eruption of violence in sub-Saharan Africa. None of the contributions takes the easy way out - either by claiming any special propensity of Africans to violence, or by calling attention to titillating aspects of the violence itself. Rather, they offer 'thick descriptions' of particular violent episodes to develop their contexts and the larger causes that made them happen. The case studies, drawn from field research in Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, search for the meaning of specific instances of collective violence to the individuals caught up in them. - Nelson Kasfir, Dartmouth College This coherently assembled set of contributions illuminates crucial aspects of the disorder and insecurity afflicting much of contemporary Africa. The potent social force of a marginalized youth generation is explored in its different manifestations in a variety of settings by an excellent roster of scholars. - Crawford Young, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison Unmatched in its ethnographic depth and attention to critical dimensions of African conflicts.... This volume cuts across the continent and across several intertwining themes to provide highly contextual analyses within a well-defined framework. - Catherine Besteman, Colby College, editor of Violence: A Reader

Author Information

Edna G. Bay, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University, is author of Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey (Virginia). Donald L. Donham, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, is author of Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution.

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