States of Violence: Politics, Youth, and Memory in Contemporary Africa

by Edna G. Bay, Donald L. Donham

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.

Many of the essays address generational tensions through the role of African youth, which in this context is almost exclusively male. The violence perpetrated by young men stems not only from ideologies of masculinity but also from a frustration over both their own unrealized adulthood and the failure of an adult leadership whose interaction with the youth often seems limited to enlisting them in more bloodshed. Other essays examine the temptation in an atmosphere of violence to exploit the malleability of memory to construct, or reconstruct, histories in order to justify the sacrifice and shifts of power brought on by that violence.

Wide-ranging but sharply focused, States of Violence takes in power struggles in Sierra Leone, nationalism in postcolonial Zimbabwe, the Bakassi boys of Nigeria, and offers probing examinations of such pivotal events as the Rwandan genocide and the Alexandra Rebellion, shedding new light on the role of each in the drama being played out in this troubled continent.

ContributorsWilliam Reno, Northwestern University * Joanna Davidson, Emory University * Daniel Smith, Brown University * Elaine Salo, University of Cape Town * Martha Carey, Emory University * Jocelyn Alexander, Bristol University * Belinda Bozzoli, University of Witswatersrand * Timothy Longman, Vassar College

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813925776
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	12/04/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction Edna G. Bay 1

Staring at Suffering: Violence as a Subject Donald L. Donham 16

Modern States and the Local Definition of Insiders/Outsiders

The Political Economy of Order amidst Predation in Sierra Leone William Reno 37

Rotten Fish: Polarization, Pluralism, and Migrant-Host Relations in Guinea-Bissau Joanna Davidson 58

Youth, Gender, and Generation

"Survival Is Political": History, Violence, and the Contemporary Power Struggle in Sierra Leone Martha Carey 97

Violent Vigilantism and the State in Nigeria: The Case of the Bakassi Boys Daniel Jordan Smith 127

Mans is ma soe: Ganging Practices in Manenberg, South Africa, and the Ideologies of Masculinity, Gender, and Generational Relations Elaine Salo 148

The Social Construction of Forgetting and Remembering Violence

Memory, Forgetting, and the Alexandra Rebellion of 1986 Belinda Bozzoli 179

Veterans, Violence, and Nationalism in Zimbabwe Jocelyn Alexander and Joann Mcgregor 215

Memory and Violence in Postgenocide Rwanda Timothy Longman and Theoneste Rutagengwa 236

Notes on Contributors 261

Index 265