L Lombard
Biographic Data
| ID | 17820 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Lombard |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Lombard |
| SIGNATURE | LOMBARD L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7566-5125 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 76 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Playing with concepts
At the other extreme from jargon is the replication of real people’s experience, something that anthropologists constantly strive to achieve while acknowledging that we do not read people’s minds. Catherine Donaldson, in this issue, offers a fascinating form of serious play as one potential answer to this dilemma. By inviting individuals who have suffered the torments of immigration and its policing to act out roles related to their own experienc…
Introduction: In Memoriam, James Ferguson
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Substances and relationalities
Instability and adaptation: Holding onto what matters while trying something new
Acknowledging the importance and relevance of the questions on time that her critics raised, Naveeda Khan opts to not address them point by point, focusing instead on the larger questions they feed into. Climate emergency is one of them. In this framework, Khan notes that the eradication of poverty that was once the goal of development is now encompassed within the more urgent mission of climate resilience, and specifically disaster risk reductio…
Knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics
Creativity, courage, and care
Beyond Despair: The Rwanda Genocide Against the Tutsi Through the Eyes of Children
Tradition, transformation, and charting futures
The artist of the drawing above, Adija Acuil, became a cartoonist because cartoons incensed him.A migrant from southern Sudan to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in the 1980s, Acuil noticed that newspaper cartoons regularly "deformed" the southern Sudanese rebel leader John Garang, so that "he looked like a monkey, or sometimes they drew him to look like the devils," as Acuil recounted to me (Lombard)
Revisiting the Azande
This introduction to a special section, "Revisiting the Azande," summarizes the historical context and theoretical insights of the classic ethnography Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande, by E. E. Evans-Pritchard. It describes developments in Zandeland over the century since the book was written and provides synopses of the articles in the collection. The Azande have lived through a turbulent century; witchcraft and oracular practices…
Movements and margins
Ethnographies of the unseen
Radical Autochthony? Proprietary Political Discourse Among Elites and Peasants in the Anti-Balaka Armed Movement in the Central African Republic
Since at least the colonial era, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been a hotbed of rural rebellion and protest. This article explores the political discourses of members of the Anti-Balaka, a diffuse protest movement and armed rebellion, comparing discourses to see how they vary in relation to demographic categories: urban and rural, elites and peasants. Lombard and Vlavonou find that rural peasants demand a moral economy of interpersonal r…
Magic, metaphysics, and methods
Spotlight on the liminal dividend
Appearance, disappearance, transience
The re-starting of history: Life in changing Russian spheres of influence
The essays in this collection look into daily life in changing Russian spheres of influence, including Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, the Central African Republic, and within Russia itself. They explore how the markers of sovereignty, nationalism, autonomy, and dependence change in the midst of this flux. They also delve into the features of ethnographic storytelling and knowledge generation in contexts of violence, upheaval, and other forms of inv…
Sovereignty triangles: Emotions and transactions in Central African relations with Russia
Increasingly over the past five years, the Russian government has been expanding its spheres of influence in Africa, chiefly via the operations of Wagner Group mercenaries. The Central African Republic has been a Wagner testing ground, a place where they have wide range to operate at will and have taken control of mining areas while targeting armed group members and civilians. What drew Central African government elites to this new relationship? …
A treasury of ideas
Many anthropologists have committed to decolonizing the field, but their references for what colonial/imperial projects look like come almost exclusively from Western cases, and are unwittingly ethnocentric in that regard. Russia’s ongoing efforts to gain territory and/or decisive influence from places beyond its current borders are evidence of other colonial dynamics, ones in which the shades of subjugation are also clothed in discourses of resc…
Identity, violence, and the uncomfortable necessity of categorization
Previous articleNext article FreeEditorial NoteIdentity, violence, and the uncomfortable necessity of categorizationRaminder Kaur, Andrew B. Kipnis, Luiz Costa, and Louisa LombardRaminder KaurUniversity of Sussex Search for more articles by this author , Andrew B. KipnisChinese University of Hong Kong Search for more articles by this author , Luiz CostaUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Search for more articles by this author , and Louisa Lom…
The interpretation of relationships: Fieldwork as boundary-negotiation
Following critiques of anthropologists' involvement in colonialism and insufficient attention to power, friendship, solidarity, and closeness have become implicit ideals for fieldwork relationships. But distance is also inherent to respectful fieldwork relationships. I therefore argue for greater attention to boundaries-the ways we are able to mutually understand in the midst of, rather than by dissolving, difference and distance-and the labor an…
Hunting Game: Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic
Denunciation and liberty
Force itself is not as straightforward as it might at first appear. Stealth proved a communicative endeavour; Chapter 7 shows that force is too. What does force intend to communicate in the context of armed conservation and acquisitive politics? Who is the intended audience? What values underlie the actors' moves? Pisteurs often use the idiom of vengeance to answer those questions, or that of why they pursue manhunts. But vengeance invites furthe…
Map
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Bringing the tracker-guards back in: Arms-carrying markets and quests for status in conservation at war
Distributive Justice at War: Displacement and Its Afterlives in the Central African Republic
One of the defining features of the crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR) since 2013 has been massive displacement. Currently, about a quarter of the country’s population is displaced. People who have been forcibly displaced, whether internally or abroad, and people who stayed behind this time (but frequently have their own memories of displacement) provide particular kinds of information about war and its not particularly peaceful afterma…
Threat economies and armed conservation in northeastern Central African Republic
Navigational Tools for Central African Roadblocks
This article explores the politics of roadblocks in the northeastern reaches of the Central African Republic. Over the past 30 years, roadblocks have become widespread in this area of extremely minimal state institutional presence; they are one symptom of broader processes of militarization. Building on work that sees the state as a set of practices with “magical” effects, I foreground the unpredictability and negotiation that characterize roadbl…
The threat of rebellion: Claiming entitled personhood in Central Africa
A recent anthropological literature on arms-carrying and violence has sought to understand these undertakings as modes of labour and work. In contrast, I focus on threats, specifically threats made in conjunction with rebellion in the Central African Republic (CAR). Doing so show what the violence/labour approach has missed. Far from seeking to adapt to the exigencies of flexible, uncertain labour circumstances, these men seek to leverage the int…
The interpretation of relationships: Fieldwork as boundary-negotiation
Following critiques of anthropologists' involvement in colonialism and insufficient attention to power, friendship, solidarity, and closeness have become implicit ideals for fieldwork relationships. But distance is also inherent to respectful fieldwork relationships. I therefore argue for greater attention to boundaries-the ways we are able to mutually understand in the midst of, rather than by dissolving, difference and distance-and the labor an…
Camouflage: The hunting origins of worlding in Africa
Much recent literature has explored the vibrancy of African urban life, and how, despite the pervasive uncertainty, people develop means of operating on the scale of the world (to ‘world’ themselves). To what extent, however, are the exigencies of worlding from Africa determined by urbanity? This article provides comparative material, focusing on worlding in one of the continent’s most remote locales, the northeastern borderlands of the Central A…
Rébellion et limites de la consolidation de la paix en République centrafricaine
Cet article examine le cycle de rébellion dans lequel est tombée la République centrafricaine (RCA) au cours de la décennie écoulée, et les faiblesses des initiatives internationales de consolidation de la paix mises en œuvre pour y répondre. Plus qu'un État unifié, l'espace cartographié comme constituant la RCA est parcouru par deux grandes catégories d'acteurs, chacune s'intégrant dans des dynamiques régionales plus larges : les rentiers de la …
Bringing the tracker-guards back in: Arms-carrying markets and quests for status in conservation at war
Distributive Justice at War: Displacement and Its Afterlives in the Central African Republic
One of the defining features of the crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR) since 2013 has been massive displacement. Currently, about a quarter of the country’s population is displaced. People who have been forcibly displaced, whether internally or abroad, and people who stayed behind this time (but frequently have their own memories of displacement) provide particular kinds of information about war and its not particularly peaceful afterma…
Denouncing Sovereignty: Claims to Liberty in Northeastern Central African Republic
This essay focuses on the northeastern borderlands of the Central African Republic (CAR), an area that though formally part of a state is mostly left to its own devices. It has no single sovereign, but many people participate in the sovereign prerogative of enacting violence in such a way as to claim a right to determine how to live. These dynamics are particularly visible in the area's contests over armed conservation, my ethnographic and histor…
Radical Autochthony? Proprietary Political Discourse Among Elites and Peasants in the Anti-Balaka Armed Movement in the Central African Republic
Since at least the colonial era, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been a hotbed of rural rebellion and protest. This article explores the political discourses of members of the Anti-Balaka, a diffuse protest movement and armed rebellion, comparing discourses to see how they vary in relation to demographic categories: urban and rural, elites and peasants. Lombard and Vlavonou find that rural peasants demand a moral economy of interpersonal r…
Books
Rébellion et limites de la consolidation de la paix en République centrafricaine
Cet article examine le cycle de rébellion dans lequel est tombée la République centrafricaine (RCA) au cours de la décennie écoulée, et les faiblesses des initiatives internationales de consolidation de la paix mises en œuvre pour y répondre. Plus qu'un État unifié, l'espace cartographié comme constituant la RCA est parcouru par deux grandes catégories d'acteurs, chacune s'intégrant dans des dynamiques régionales plus larges : les rentiers de la …
Navigational Tools for Central African Roadblocks
This article explores the politics of roadblocks in the northeastern reaches of the Central African Republic. Over the past 30 years, roadblocks have become widespread in this area of extremely minimal state institutional presence; they are one symptom of broader processes of militarization. Building on work that sees the state as a set of practices with “magical” effects, I foreground the unpredictability and negotiation that characterize roadbl…
Making Sense of the Central African Republic: The Struggle for Democracy
Lying at the centre of a tumultuous region, the Central African Republic and its turbulent history have often been overlooked. Democracy, in any kind of a meaningful sense, has eluded the country. Since the mid-1990s, army mutinies and serial rebellion in CAR have resulted in two major successful coups. Over the course of these upheavals, the country has become a laboratory for peacebuilding initiatives, hosting a two-decade-long succession of UN…
Threat economies and armed conservation in northeastern Central African Republic
State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic
Shortlisted for the Fage and Oliver Prize 2018 In 2013, the Central African Republic was engulfed by violence. In the face of the rapid spread of the conflict, journalists, politicians, and academics alike have struggled to account for its origins. In this first comprehensive account of the country’s recent upheaval, Louisa Lombard shows the limits of the superficial explanations offered thus far – that the violence has been due to a religious di…
Camouflage: The hunting origins of worlding in Africa
Much recent literature has explored the vibrancy of African urban life, and how, despite the pervasive uncertainty, people develop means of operating on the scale of the world (to ‘world’ themselves). To what extent, however, are the exigencies of worlding from Africa determined by urbanity? This article provides comparative material, focusing on worlding in one of the continent’s most remote locales, the northeastern borderlands of the Central A…
The threat of rebellion: Claiming entitled personhood in Central Africa
A recent anthropological literature on arms-carrying and violence has sought to understand these undertakings as modes of labour and work. In contrast, I focus on threats, specifically threats made in conjunction with rebellion in the Central African Republic (CAR). Doing so show what the violence/labour approach has missed. Far from seeking to adapt to the exigencies of flexible, uncertain labour circumstances, these men seek to leverage the int…
Denouncing Sovereignty: Claims to Liberty in Northeastern Central African Republic
This essay focuses on the northeastern borderlands of the Central African Republic (CAR), an area that though formally part of a state is mostly left to its own devices. It has no single sovereign, but many people participate in the sovereign prerogative of enacting violence in such a way as to claim a right to determine how to live. These dynamics are particularly visible in the area's contests over armed conservation, my ethnographic and histor…
Distributive Justice at War: Displacement and Its Afterlives in the Central African Republic
One of the defining features of the crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR) since 2013 has been massive displacement. Currently, about a quarter of the country’s population is displaced. People who have been forcibly displaced, whether internally or abroad, and people who stayed behind this time (but frequently have their own memories of displacement) provide particular kinds of information about war and its not particularly peaceful afterma…
Hunting Game: Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic
Denunciation and liberty
Force itself is not as straightforward as it might at first appear. Stealth proved a communicative endeavour; Chapter 7 shows that force is too. What does force intend to communicate in the context of armed conservation and acquisitive politics? Who is the intended audience? What values underlie the actors' moves? Pisteurs often use the idiom of vengeance to answer those questions, or that of why they pursue manhunts. But vengeance invites furthe…
Map
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Bringing the tracker-guards back in: Arms-carrying markets and quests for status in conservation at war
The re-starting of history: Life in changing Russian spheres of influence
The essays in this collection look into daily life in changing Russian spheres of influence, including Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, the Central African Republic, and within Russia itself. They explore how the markers of sovereignty, nationalism, autonomy, and dependence change in the midst of this flux. They also delve into the features of ethnographic storytelling and knowledge generation in contexts of violence, upheaval, and other forms of inv…
Sovereignty triangles: Emotions and transactions in Central African relations with Russia
Increasingly over the past five years, the Russian government has been expanding its spheres of influence in Africa, chiefly via the operations of Wagner Group mercenaries. The Central African Republic has been a Wagner testing ground, a place where they have wide range to operate at will and have taken control of mining areas while targeting armed group members and civilians. What drew Central African government elites to this new relationship? …
A treasury of ideas
Many anthropologists have committed to decolonizing the field, but their references for what colonial/imperial projects look like come almost exclusively from Western cases, and are unwittingly ethnocentric in that regard. Russia’s ongoing efforts to gain territory and/or decisive influence from places beyond its current borders are evidence of other colonial dynamics, ones in which the shades of subjugation are also clothed in discourses of resc…
Identity, violence, and the uncomfortable necessity of categorization
Previous articleNext article FreeEditorial NoteIdentity, violence, and the uncomfortable necessity of categorizationRaminder Kaur, Andrew B. Kipnis, Luiz Costa, and Louisa LombardRaminder KaurUniversity of Sussex Search for more articles by this author , Andrew B. KipnisChinese University of Hong Kong Search for more articles by this author , Luiz CostaUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Search for more articles by this author , and Louisa Lom…
The interpretation of relationships: Fieldwork as boundary-negotiation
Following critiques of anthropologists' involvement in colonialism and insufficient attention to power, friendship, solidarity, and closeness have become implicit ideals for fieldwork relationships. But distance is also inherent to respectful fieldwork relationships. I therefore argue for greater attention to boundaries-the ways we are able to mutually understand in the midst of, rather than by dissolving, difference and distance-and the labor an…
Magic, metaphysics, and methods
Spotlight on the liminal dividend
Appearance, disappearance, transience
Beyond Despair: The Rwanda Genocide Against the Tutsi Through the Eyes of Children
Tradition, transformation, and charting futures
The artist of the drawing above, Adija Acuil, became a cartoonist because cartoons incensed him.A migrant from southern Sudan to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in the 1980s, Acuil noticed that newspaper cartoons regularly "deformed" the southern Sudanese rebel leader John Garang, so that "he looked like a monkey, or sometimes they drew him to look like the devils," as Acuil recounted to me (Lombard)
Revisiting the Azande
This introduction to a special section, "Revisiting the Azande," summarizes the historical context and theoretical insights of the classic ethnography Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande, by E. E. Evans-Pritchard. It describes developments in Zandeland over the century since the book was written and provides synopses of the articles in the collection. The Azande have lived through a turbulent century; witchcraft and oracular practices…
Sociology (20 works) · Political science (19 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (13 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (11 works) · History (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Art (6 works)