We Are Suffering Here”
Mobility, Belonging and Distinction in Contemporary Liberia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12955355 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maarten Bedert (0000-0002-5899-0663, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 19-42 |
| Publication date | 2021-11-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Diaspora (BOOK_SERIES) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1872-5457 • E-ISSN: 1872-5465 |
| Publisher | Brill (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1163/18725465-bja10019 |
| OpenAlex | W3213162755 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 43 |
Liberia is a state built on a history of migration. From the transatlantic slave trade to its contemporary generation of transnational citizens, images of elsewhere have always informed this West African country’s local and national discussions of integration and exclusion. This paper shows how historical imaginations and representations of ‘here’ and ‘there’, of ‘suffering’ and ‘escape’, inform contemporary discourses of belonging in Liberia. I argue that the imagination of civilisation – kwii – and distinction plays an important role in the ways distance and mobility are perceived and articulated, both from a physical point of view and a moral-social point of view, at transnational and local levels. Rather than being merely tied to a national elite, the imagination of mobility is, I demonstrate, linked to an ethos of suffering articulated at all levels of society, informed by the experience of structural violence and crises over time
Aesthetics · Art · Civilization · Elite · Ethos · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
Introduction
Cultural Anthropology
The African Frontier
A Saucy Town? Regional Histories Of Conflict, Collusion, And Commerce In The Making Of A Southeastern Liberian Polity
Patrimonial Logic Of Centrifugal Forces In The Political History Of The Upper Guinea Coast
Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration
Years of Conflict
Between rootedness and rootlessness
Bushfalling at All Cost
Progress in Human Geography
Harvard Theological Review
Kola Production and Settlement Mobility among the Dan of Nimba, Liberia
War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone
The powerful presence of the past
Diasporas and Their Discontents
Diasporicity and Its Discontents
Memories of the Slave Trade
Youth Mobilisation as Social Navigation. Reflections on the concept of dubriagem
To fight or to farm? Agrarian dimensions of the Mano River conflicts (Liberia and Sierra Leone)
Understanding Immobility
Jeux de frontière
Birthplace, bloodline and beyond
African conflicts and informal power
Darkness before Daybreak
Cultivating Hustlers
"Everything That Really Matters"
No Success Without Struggle
Civilized Women
Why we fight
Loma political culture
Secret knowledge as property and power in Kpelle society
The City as Barracks
The rhetorical management of dangerous knowledge in Kpelle brokerage
Violence, Just in Time
Global Shadows
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |