Love and Violence in Sierra Leone

Mediating Intimacy after Conflict

AvLuisa T. Schneider

Inbunden, Engelska, 2025

Del i serien International African Library

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Beskrivning

In the decades following the civil war that took place in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002, new laws were passed to rebuild the state, and to prevent rape, teenage pregnancy and domestic violence. In this ethnography, Luisa T. Schneider explores the intricate semantic, empirical and socio-legal dynamics of love and violence in post-conflict Sierra Leone, challenging the oversimplification of these phenomena. Schneider underscores the limitations of imposing singular interpretations on love and violence, advocating for a nuanced, phenomenological approach that reveals how state and institutional attempts to regulate violence and loving relationships without considering local lived experience and meaning-making can yield negative consequences. By analysing how love and violence are historically constituted, experienced, and (re)produced across personal, social, legal, and political levels, this book critiques the construction of violence within gendered sexual relationships by development agencies, law makers and politicians, urging them to engage with local knowledge and experience. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2025-01-23
Mått:237 x 159 x 23 mm
Vikt:560 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:International African Library
Antal sidor:283
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781009533034

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Mer om författaren

Dr Luisa T. Schneider is a sociocultural anthropologist, specializing in intimacy, violence, and law. Schneider is Assistant Professor at VU Amsterdam and Research Partner at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, a published academic and public author, and advisor to policymakers and practitioners. She has conducted ethnographic research which emphasizes the importance of local knowledge for over ten years.

Recensioner i media

'In Luisa Schneider's ground-breaking study of the dialectics and dilemmas of intimacy in postwar Sierra Leone, 'love' and 'violence' are shown to be semantically and socially ambiguous. Even when an ideal complementarity is posited between men and women, the interplay between subtle persuasion and brute force (in local parlance, 'tongue' versus 'teeth') is not only volatile and vexed but further exacerbated by the incommensurability of state laws, local customs, notions of human rights, and the diversity of individual experience.' Michael Jackson, author of Life Within Limits: Well-Being in a World of Want

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction; 1. Access, Methodology and Ethics; 2. The impact of violence on relationships; 3. Loving and living relationships in Freetown today; 4. The Spectrum of violence in relationships; 5. The language of violence; 6. Household and community mediations of violence; 7. Invoking the State-when Adults report violence in their relationships to the Police; 8. Minors before the Law-building futures, policing sex; 9. Perpetrators? The consequence of the sexual offences Act for Young Men; Conclusion; References; Index.