This book examines the radical changes in social and political landscape of the Upper Guinea Coast region over the past 30 years as a result of civil wars, post-war interventions by international, humanitarian agencies and peacekeeping missions, as well as a regional public health crisis (Ebola epidemic). The emphasis on crises in this book draws attention to the intense socio-transformations in the region over the last three decades. Contemporary crises and changes in the region provoke a challenge to accepted ways of understanding and imagining socio-political life in the region whether at the level of subnational and national communities, or international and regional structures of interest, such as refugees, weapon trafficking, cross-border military incursions, regional security, and transnational epidemics. This book explores and transcends the central explanatory tropes that have oriented research on the region and re-evaluates them in the light of the contemporary structural dynamics of crises, changes and continuities.
1. Introduction: Deconstructing Tropes of Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea
Christian K. H?jbjerg, Jacqueline Kn?rr, William P. Murphy
Part I: (Re-)Configuration of Identifications and Alliances
2. Poro Society, Migration and Political Incorporation on the Freetown Peninsula, Sierra Leone
Ana?s M?nard
3. Challenging the Classical Parameters of 'Doing Host-Refugee Politics': The Case of Casamance Refugees in The Gambia
Charlotte Ray
4. Betterment versus Complicity: Struggling with Patron-Client Logica in Sierra Leone
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