
Out of War
Violence, Trauma, and the Political Imagination in Sierra Leone
Mariane C. Ferme(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 10. August 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-0-520-29438-7 (ISBN)
Description
Out of War draws on the author's three decades of ethnographic engagements to examine the after-effects of the harms of a civil war whose legacy is experienced in both physical and psychological ways. The author examines the relationship among violence, temporality, trauma, and forms of knowledge. She also puts an emphasis on "war times"-on the different qualities of temporality. Questions explored are the persistence of pre-colonial and colonial figures of sovereignty re-elaborated in the context of war, and the circulation of rumors and neologisms that freeze in time (or "chronotopes") collective anxieties. Above and beyond the expected traumas of war, the author explores the breaks in the intergenerational transmission of techniques of farming and hunting knowledge, and the lethal effects of remembering experienced traumas, and of forgetting local knowledge.
In the context of massive population displacements and humanitarian interventions, the ethnography traces strategies of survival and material dwelling, and the juridical creation of new figures of victimhood, where colonial and postcolonial legacies are reinscribed in neoliberal projects of decentralization and individuation.
In the context of massive population displacements and humanitarian interventions, the ethnography traces strategies of survival and material dwelling, and the juridical creation of new figures of victimhood, where colonial and postcolonial legacies are reinscribed in neoliberal projects of decentralization and individuation.
Reviews / Votes
"Ferme weaves together a careful analysis of archival writings and photos with participant observation, personal meditations, and reinterpretations of war tropes to illustrate how violence flares up in popular anxieties and then dies down, or how it continues to live on in traumas, deaths, and breakages in the social world." * African Studies Review *More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
19 b-w, 1 map
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
499 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-29438-7 (9780520294387)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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08/2018
1st Edition
University of California Press
€98.99
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E-Book
08/2018
1st Edition
University of California Press
€34.49
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Person
Mariane C. Ferme is Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Berkeley and author of The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
War Times and Forms of Life
1 Belatedness
Vision, Writing, and the Labor of Time
Chronotope 1: Prefiguring Shifting Alliances-The Sobel
2 Wartime Rumors
Red Cross as Rebel Cross and Other Figures of the Collective Imagination
Chronotope 2: Numbers, Examples, and Exceptions
3 Hunters, Warriors, and Their Technologies
4 Sitting on the Land
The Political and Symbolic Economy of the Chieftaincy
5 Refugees and Diasporic Publics
The Territorial State Reconfigured
6 Child Soldiers and the Contested Imaginary of Community after War
7 Forced Marriage and Sexual Enslavement
Debating Consent, Custom, and the Law at the Special Court for Sierra Leone
8 Inscriptions on the Wall
Chinese Material Traces in the Landscape
Conclusion
Surviving and Moving On-Ephemeral Returns
Notes
References
Acknowledgments
Introduction
War Times and Forms of Life
1 Belatedness
Vision, Writing, and the Labor of Time
Chronotope 1: Prefiguring Shifting Alliances-The Sobel
2 Wartime Rumors
Red Cross as Rebel Cross and Other Figures of the Collective Imagination
Chronotope 2: Numbers, Examples, and Exceptions
3 Hunters, Warriors, and Their Technologies
4 Sitting on the Land
The Political and Symbolic Economy of the Chieftaincy
5 Refugees and Diasporic Publics
The Territorial State Reconfigured
6 Child Soldiers and the Contested Imaginary of Community after War
7 Forced Marriage and Sexual Enslavement
Debating Consent, Custom, and the Law at the Special Court for Sierra Leone
8 Inscriptions on the Wall
Chinese Material Traces in the Landscape
Conclusion
Surviving and Moving On-Ephemeral Returns
Notes
References