Introduction to Special Issue

Security, Socioecology, Polity: Mande Hunters, Civil Society, and Nation-States in Contemporary West Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID3751114
AuthorsMacedward Leach (0000-0002-1293-6848, corresponding author), Melissa Leach (0000-0002-8435-5401)
Year2004
Volume50
Issue4
Pagesvii-xvi
Publication date2004-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrica Today (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9887 • E-ISSN: 1527-1978
PublisherIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/at.2004.0052
OpenAlexW4239563810
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited10

The public prominence of hunters and their organizations is a striking phenomenon in West Africa. Whether on the streets or rural byways of the countries stretching from Sierra Leone to Cote d'Ivoire, or in media, internet, or policy debate, hunters seem to be everywhere: as security guards, civildefense fighters, environmental guardians, spokesepeople for rural development projects, actors in party politics, and articulators of emergent regional and ethnic identities. In the warfare that beset the region in late 2002, hundreds of hunters were fighting in COte d'Ivoire in a conflict with strong potential, according to some commentators, for spread into Guinea (http://www.irinnews/org/webspecials/ClCrisis/, 4 December 2002). As the Kamajor civil-defense force, hunters had played a decisive role several years earlier in Sierra Leone's civil war (Muana 1997). In the environmental arena, hunters are now forefronted as the key force to guard national parks and implement global conservation objectives. A suggestion that European donor agencies might inadvertently be building in Guinea an armed rebellion (Leach 2000) may prove to have been alarmingly prophetic. The papers in this collection expose and reflect on the new roles that hunters are playing in West Africa's political and social affairs, in a variety of national and local settings. Most of the papers were first presented at the 2002 African Studies Association Meetings in Washington, D.C., on the panel Mande Hunters, Nation-States, and Civil Society in Contemporary West Africa, co-organized by Joseph Hellweg and Thomas Bassett and sponsored by the Studies Association. I served as discussant. Mariane Ferme and Danny Hoffman subsequently completed the collection with their contribution. Joseph Hellweg coordinated and edited the papers into the present issue. In these articles, Thomas Bassett and Joseph Hellweg focus on different aspects of hunters' roles in political and military security in Cote

Civil society · Ethnology · Geography · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · African Studies and Ethnography · Anthropology · Cambodian History and Society · HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses · International Development and Aid · Law

Tools

Open DOI