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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Violence of Numbers: Consensus, Competition, and the Negotiation of Disputes in Sierra Leone
Author:Ferme, MarianeISNI
Year:1998
Periodical:Cahiers d'études africaines
Volume:38
Issue:150-152
Pages:555-580
Language:English
Geographic term:Sierra Leone
Subjects:violence
democracy
political action
Law, Human Rights and Violence
Politics and Government
Miscellaneous (i.e. Demography, Refugees, Sports)
External link:https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1998.1814
Abstract:Representations of the civil war in Sierra Leone have remained within the exceptionalist discourse characteristic of much of the literature on crises in Africa since the 1980s. By contrast, this article suggests that in order to understand the logic of wartime violence, one must focus on its ordinary, structural forms, which are at work in the apparently technical procedures of peacetime governance. The author examines the 'normal' operations of democratic politics (especially elections), the court system, and the State's techniques of enumeration and classification (the census, taxation, development planning). These practices and institutions are often seen as violent and exclusionary by the people of Sierra Leone because of the turbulent history of their introduction in the territory. In all cases, the search for clear outcomes - such as the creation of winners and losers in elections and court cases - alternates with ambiguous strategies that undercut the presumption of finality in such processes. These strategies are deployed by the State's subjects, in efforts to construct alternative subjectivities that escape the exceptionalist logic of modern forms of power. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in English and French.
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