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War and Violence in Africa
The Myth and the Reality
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History of Wars in Africa
• Independence movements: mainly peaceful (protests, riots); armed conflict in some countries, mainly those with white settlers
• The “Cold” War (1945-1990): proxy wars in Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia; not nuclear weapons, but the AK-47
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Rise of “Small Wars”• The use of the AK-47 or other low-
tech weapons (machetes)• Confusion who is fighting: the rise of
the “sobel” (both intent on living off civilians and capturing economic resources: e.g., diamond mines in Sierra Leone, elephant tusks in eastern Congo)
• High civilian casualties: sometimes the direct victim of an attack; more usually, death from displacement, difficulty getting resources: e.g., in Sierra Leone, 15,000 civilians killed and 40% displaced internally or outside the country (out of population of 4m).
Koidu Diamond Holdings, Kono, Sierra Leone
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Thinking about violence and war anthropologically
Key insight #1:• War and violence express
social conflict; if we understand the local social order, we can understand violence as political actions
• What was Peter Uvin’s argument about why the genocide happened in Rwanda in 1994?
Kigali, Rwanda
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Thinking about violence anthropologically
• Why did the RUF go to war against the state? Richards argues: “The crisis of patrimonialism”
• What does this mean?• How does this relate to big
men/big women• Why the focus on youth?• Why take over the diamond
mines?• “The movement is a creature of
the unresolved contradictions of the post-colonial state” (p. 553)
Child soldiers of RUF
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Thinking about violence anthropologically
Key insight #2:• Brutality and dehumanization
occur through culturally symbolic actions
• Violence is performative, symbolically communicative
• “Civilized”/”barbaric” (or the current terms: “modern” or “developed”)
• Why cut off the arms of civilians in Sierra Leone?
• Brutal acts then become comprehensible
Father and child, displaced in Freetown
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Thinking about violence anthropologically
• Rambo’s “First Blood” (1982) as a key myth for the RUF
• POA, p. 552• Note how global media
become re-signified and made meaningful locally
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Thinking about violence anthropologically
Social harmony = personal healthCuring of personal illness = curing of social disorder
In the Rwandan genocide of 1994,
• Why so many checkpoints?• Why rape?• Why impaling?
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Thinking about violence anthropologically
Key insight #3• Violence and war may not
create a new and different social order
• Rebellion may express and contain social change
• What is a ritual of rebellion, according to Max Gluckman?
Nomkubulwana, the goddess of rain, harvest, and fertility
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Incwala ceremony, Swaziland