The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone / Edition 1

by Mariane C. Ferme

Overview

In this erudite and gracefully written ethnography, Mariane Ferme explores the links between a violent historical and political legacy, and the production of secrecy in everyday material culture. The focus is on Mende-speaking southeastern Sierra Leone and the surrounding region. Since 1990, this area has been ravaged by a civil war that produced population displacements and regional instability. The Underneath of Things documents the rural impact of the progressive collapse of the Sierra Leonean state in the past several decades, and seeks to understand how an even earlier history is reinscribed in the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520225435
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	09/14/2001
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	299
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mariane C. Ferme is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations 
Acknowledgments 

Introduction 

1. Immaterial Practices: Clues in a Modern Sierra Leonean 
    Landscape
    INTERLUDE I: Weaving Cloth, Hair, and the Social World 
2. Ambiguity and Gendered Practices 
3. Strategies of Incorporation: Marriage and the Forms of 
    Dependence
    INTERLUDE 2: Splitting Kola 
4. The House of Impermanence and the Politics of Mobility 
5. Becoming a Kpako: The Body and the Aesthetics of Power 
    INTERLUDE 3: Clay, Palm Oil, and Temporality 
6. Children and Their Doubles 

Conclusion 
Notes 
References 
Index