State of rebellion

In 2012 violence in the CAR rebellion spiked and drew international attention to this little-known part of the world. This book builds on thirteen years of engagement with the CAR and Lombard demonstrates a deep understanding of the country’s complex dynamics. The book adopts an ethnographic approach and successfully challenges our understandings of the state. It makes an important and thoughtful contribution not only to the literature on the CAR and on the African state, but also to debates about peacebuilding and international intervention in African conflicts. The book sets out to understand the nature of the CAR state and does so through a careful unpacking of various actors’ motivations. Lombard’s approach to the nature of the state in the CAR is to see it as existing only as an ideal. The idea of the state is a ‘bond – both a point of connection and a chain that structures [...] relationships in ways that the individuals involved cannot transcend’ (p. 31). The idea that people hold of the state across the territory structures their interactions with it, despite the fact that the CAR government’s structures are barely present outside the capital. According to Lombard, Central Africans strongly desire a state, but at the same time they experience its cruelty.

Criminology · Cruelty · Government (linguistics) · Ideal (ethics) · Intervention (counseling) · Peacebuilding · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · State formation · Gender Studies · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Psychology

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