Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea Coast Societies

1. Introduction: Deconstructing Tropes of Politics and Policies in Upper GuineaChristian K. Højbjerg, Jacqueline Knörr, William P. MurphyPart I: (Re-)Configuration of Identifications and Alliances2. Poro Society, Migration and Political Incorporation on the Freetown Peninsula, Sierra LeoneAnaïs Ménard3. Challenging the Classical Parameters of 'Doing Host-Refugee Politics': The Case of Casamance Refugees in The GambiaCharlotte Ray 4. Betterment versus Complicity: Struggling with Patron-Client Logica in Sierra LeoneAnne Menzel5. Kinship Tropes as Critique of Patronage in Post-War Sierra LeoneWilliam P. MurphyPart II: Challenging Conventions of Explaining and Situating Violent Conflict6. Grand Narratives of Crisis: Grand Narratives of Crisis: Customary Conflicts as a Factor in the Liberian Civil War and Implications for PolicyDavid Brown7. Historicizing as a Legal Trope of Jeopardy in Asylum Narratives and Expert Testimonies of Gender-Based ViolenceBenjamin Lawrance8. Revisiting Tropes of Environmental and Social Change in Casamance, SenegalMartin Evans9. Casamance Secession: National Narratives of Marginalization and IntegrationMarkus RudolfPart III: (Re-)Contextualizing Postcolonial Statehood and National Belonging10. Transcending Traditional Tropes: Autochthony as a Discourse of Conflict and Integration in Post-war Krio/Non-Krio Relations in Sierra LeoneSylvanus Spencer 11. Ethnicity as Trope of Political Belonging and Conflict: Cape Verdean Identity and Agency in Guinea-BissauChristoph Kohl12. Dynamics in the Host-Stranger Paradigm: The Broker Role of a Latecomer Association in Western Côte d'IvoireKatharina Heitz TokpaPart IV: (Re-)Conceptualizing Development and Intervention13. Roads as Imaginary for Employing Idle Youth in the Post-Conflict Liberian StateJairo Munive14. Tropes, Networks and Higher Education in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone: Policy Formation at the University of MakeniDavid O'Kane15. Bulletproofing: Small Arms, International Law, and Spiritual

Christian K. Højbjerg was Associate Professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and for many years a member of the research group "Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast" at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. He published extensively on a range of subjects, including historical memory, ritual and social organization, conflict and emergent political orders, identity and difference, and the role of reflexivity in shaping both social change and theoretical change.

Jacqueline Knörr is Head of of the research group "Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast" at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Extraordinary Professor at the Martin Luther University in Halle/Saale, Germany. Her research and publications focus on issues of identity, integration, migration, diaspora, gender, creolization, (trans)nationalism and childhood. Her regional foci are West Africa and Indonesia.

William P. Murphy is Research Affiliate in the Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, USA and research partner of the research group "Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast" at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. His early research focused on secrecy and socio-political hierarchy in Liberia, and on the language and strategies of chiefly political succession in Sierra Leone. His current research examines the language and organization of violence in civil war, using case material from Liberia and Sierra Leone.