Powerful Presence of the Past

Jacqueline Knörr (PhD 1994, Bayreuth; Habilitation 2006, Halle/Saale) is an anthropologist and head of the research group “Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. She has done extensive field research in West Africa, Indonesia and Germany and has published widely on identity in postcolonial contexts, creolization and creoleness, childhood and migration, initiation and identity, and on expatriate communities. Regionally her research focusses on West Africa, Indonesia and Germany.Wilson Trajano Filho (PhD 1998, University of Pennsylvania) is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Brasilia in Brasil. His research concentrates on processes of creolization, the role of creole groups in nation-building, the history of (Portuguese) colonialism and popular culture in Africa and Brazil. He has published widely on these themes and has conducted extensive field research in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome.

"[..] The chapters (by anthropologists David Berliner, James Fairhead, Christian Højbjerg, William Murphy, Krijn Peters, Ramon Sarró, Susan Shepler, and Elizabeth Tonkin, and historians Stephen Ellis, Bruce Mouser, Peter Mark, and Jodi Tomàs, plus the editors) are individually strong. Important new insights are frequent. Among the highlights on the anthropological side is a splendid essay by Ramon Sarró showing that identity among the Baga of the coast of Guinea is at any one point in time the product of temporally and spatially variable processes of social incorporation and exclusion. This should be mandatory reading for any manipulator of a ‘large N’ conflict data set inclined to code ‘ethnicity’ as a single variable. [..] Excellent contributions by the historians include an especially significant chapter by Stephen Ellis on Liberian politics, since it expands and modifies his widely discussed earlier arguments about violence and the occult. [..] Space excludes further discussion of admirable contributions by Wilson Trajano Filho, Bruce Mouser, Krin Peters, and others, but it is safe to say that no anthropologist or historian interested in modern Africa or armed conflict and violence will want to be without this collection." - Paul Richards, Wageningen University and Research Centre, in: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18:2, 466-510

• CONTENTSList of Maps Acknowledgements List of ContributorsIntroduction Jacqueline Knörr & Wilson Trajano Filho(PRE-)COLONIAL LEGACIESPatrimonial Logic of Centrifugal Forces in the Political History of the Upper Guinea Coast William P. MurphyInsurrection as Socioeconomic Change: Three Rebellions in Guinea/Sierra Leone in the Eighteenth Century Bruce MouserKouankan and the Guinea-Liberian Border James FairheadA Saucy Town? Regional Histories of Conflict, Collusion, and Commerce in the Making of a SoutheasternLiberian Polity Elizabeth Tonkin‘Traditional’ Jola Peacemaking: From the Perspectives of an Historian and an Anthropologist Peter Mark & Jordi TomàsREVISITING THE POLITICS OF ELITE CULTUREThe Creole Idea of Nation and its Predicaments: The Case of Guinea-Bissau Wilson Trajano FilhoThe Mutual Assimilation of Elites: The Development of Secret Societies in Twentieth Century Liberian Politics Stephen EllisOut of Hiding? Strategies of Empowering the Past in the Reconstruction of Krio Identity Jacqueline KnörrTHE POWER AND POLITICS OF MEMORIESMap and Territory: The Politics of Place and Autochthony among Baga Sitem (and their Neighbours) Ramon SarróThe Invention of Bulongic Identity (Guinea-Conakry) David BerlinerVictims and Heroes: Manding Historical Imagination in a Conflict-ridden Border Region (Liberia-Guinea) Christian K. HøjbjergCONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN INTERGENERATIONAL AND GENDER RELATIONSAre ‘Child Soldiers’ in Sierra Leone a New Phenomenon?Susan SheplerGenerating Rebels and Soldiers: On the Socio-Economic Crisis of Rural Youth in Sierra Leone before the War Krijn PetersIndex