scholarly journals Delivering output and struggling for change: Tacit activism among professional transitional justice work in Sierra Leone and Kenya

2021 ◽  
pp. 001083672110008
Author(s):  
Anne Menzel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Professional Contexts ◽  
High Politics

The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) has received extensive academic attention in TJ and related international relations and peacebuilding scholarship. This article adds an element that has received hardly any attention: namely the presence of activism even among professional and usually donor-funded TJ work. I argue that noticing activism in professional contexts requires attention to the ‘everyday’, meaning to life in between, aside and beyond high politics and officially important actors, actions, processes and events. Based on field research in Sierra Leone and Kenya, I describe and discuss everyday examples of a specific form of activism, namely tacit activism that I encountered with three key interlocutors, one Sierra Leonean and two Kenyan nationals involved in professional donor-funded TJ work. Their activism was ’tacit’ in the sense that it was not part of their official project activities and my interlocutors did not advertise their extra plans and efforts to (prospective) donors. And yet, it was precisely through these tacit plans and efforts that they hoped to meet at least some of the expectations that had been raised in the context of professional TJ projects.

scholarly journals Restorative Justice in Transitional Sierra Leone

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Apori Nkansah
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The People ◽  
Conflict Reconciliation

Intense debate surrounds truth commissions as to their mission, perceived roles and outcomes. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of truth commissions in post-conflict settings. It examines the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for Sierra Leone, the first truth commission to be engaged concurrently with a retributive mechanism, the Special Court for Sierra Leone for transitional justice. The study finds that the TRC provided an opening for conversation in Sierra Leonean communities to search for the meanings of truth about the conflict. In this way the communities simultaneously created an understanding of the situation and set reconciliation directions and commitment from the process of creative conversation.  This notwithstanding, the TRC did not have the needed public cooperation because the people were not sure the war was over and feared that their assailants could harm them if they disclosed the truth to the TRC. The presence of the Special Court also created tensions and fears rendering the transitional environment unfriendly to the reconciliation and truth telling endeavors of the TRC. The study has implications for future truth commissions in that the timing for post-conflict reconciliation endeavors should take into consideration the state of the peace equilibrium of the societies involved. It should also be packaged for harmonious existence in a given transitional contexts, particularly where it will coexist with a retributive mechanism.

scholarly journals (En)gendering post-conflict agency: Women’s experiences of the ‘local’ in Sierra Leone

2021 ◽  
pp. 001083672110007
Author(s):  
Laura S Martin
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
International Programs ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Gendered Power

This article explores how female agency and experience manifest in a local Sierra Leonean peacebuilding program known as Fambul Tok. While post-conflict literature, namely transitional justice and peacebuilding, has become more critical in recent years, there is still a tendency to generalize both the ‘local’ and ‘women’. There is, however, much greater scope to delineate how local programs shape and are shaped by women in these settings. While Fambul Tok was, at least theoretically, meant to better align with the needs and priorities of Sierra Leoneans, including women, the empirics suggest that female engagement ultimately results in a wide range of outcomes, which are not necessarily more ‘empowering’, ‘transformative’ or ‘good’ than international programs. Drawing on original empirical data from Fambul Tok, this article highlights the complexity of gendered power relations within these programs and how individual women have multiple, diverse and contested forms of agency and experiences within local settings.

scholarly journals The Everyday Life of Security: Capturing Space, Practice, and Affect

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonna Nyman
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Participatory Photography ◽  
High Politics ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

Abstract Security shapes everyday life, but despite a growing literature on everyday security there is no consensus on the meaning of the “everyday.” At the same time, the research methods that dominate the field are designed to study elites and high politics. This paper does two things. First, it brings together and synthesizes the existing literature on everyday security to argue that we should think about the everyday life of security as constituted across three dimensions: space, practice, and affect. Thus, the paper adds conceptual clarity, demonstrating that the everyday life of security is multifaceted and exists in mundane spaces, routine practices, and affective/lived experiences. Second, it works through the methodological implications of a three-dimensional understanding of everyday security. In order to capture all three dimensions and the ways in which they interact, we need to explore different methods. The paper offers one such method, exploring the everyday life of security in contemporary China through a participatory photography project with six ordinary citizens in Beijing. The central contribution of the paper is capturing—conceptually and methodologically—all three dimensions, in order to develop our understanding of the everyday life of security.

scholarly journals Lassa Virus Circulation in Small Mammal Populations in Bo District, Sierra Leone

Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Umaru Bangura ◽  
Jacob Buanie ◽  
Joyce Lamin ◽  
Christopher Davis ◽  
Gédéon Ngiala Bongo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Analysis ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Small Mammal ◽  
Hemorrhagic Fever ◽  
Lassa Fever ◽  
Lassa Virus ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Bayesian Phylogenetic Analysis ◽  
Prevalent Species ◽  
Lineage Iv

Lassa fever is a viral hemorrhagic fever caused by the Lassa virus LASV, which was first isolated in the rodent Mastomys natalensis in 1974 in Kenema, Sierra Leone. As little is known about the abundance and the presence of LASV in rodents living in the Bo area, we carried out a small mammal longitudinal population survey. A standardized trapping session was performed in various habitats and seasons in six villages over two years (2014–2016) and samples collected were tested for arenavirus IgG and LASV. A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis was performed on sequences identified by PCR. A total of 1490 small mammals were collected, and 16 rodent species were identified, with M. natalensis (355, 24%) found to be the most prevalent species. Forty-one (2.8%) samples were IgG positive, and 31 of these were trapped in homes and 10 in surrounding vegetation. Twenty-nine of 41 seropositive rodents were M. natalensis. We detected four LASV by PCR in two villages, all found in M. natalensis. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the sequences were distributed within the Sierra Leonean clade within lineage IV, distinguishing a Bo sub-clade older than a Kenema sub-clade. Compared to other settings, we found a low abundance of M. natalensis and a low circulation of LASV in rodents in villages around Bo district.

scholarly journals A Clear Past and a Murky Future: Life in the Anthropocene on the Pampana River, Sierra Leone

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Marcantonio ◽  
Agustin Fuentes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Complex Adaptive

The impacts of human activities on ecosystems are significantly increasing the rate of environmental change in the earth system, reshaping the global landscape. The rapid rate of environmental change is disrupting the ability of millions of people around the globe to live their everyday lives and maintain their human niche. Evidence suggests that we have entered (or created) a new epoch, the Anthropocene, which is defined as the period in which humans and human activities are the primary drivers of planetary change. The Anthropocene denotes a global shift, but it is the collective of local processes. This is our frame for investigating local accounts of human-caused disruptive environmental change in the Pampana River in Tonkolili District, Northern Province, Sierra Leone. Since the end of the Sierra Leonean civil war in 2002, the country has experienced a rapid increase in extractive industries, namely mining. We explored the effects of this development by working with communities along the Pampana River in Tonkolili, with a specific focus given to engaging local fishermen through ethnographic interviews (N = 21 fishermen and 33 non-fishermen), focus group discussions (N = 21 fishermen), and participant observation. We deployed theoretical and methodological frameworks from human niche construction theory, complex adaptive systems, and ethnography to track disruptive environmental change in and on the Pampana from upstream activities and the concomitant shifts in the local human niche. We highlight the value of integrating ethnographic methods with human evolutionary theory, produce important insights about local human coping processes with disruptive environmental change, and help to further account for and understand the ongoing global process of human modification of the earth system in the Anthropocene.

scholarly journals Historical materialism and international studies: theorising the politics of struggle in the everyday world

2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782199161
Author(s):  
Cemal Burak Tansel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday World ◽  
Global War ◽  
Materialist Feminist

This forum brings together critical engagements with Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton’s Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis to assess the prospects and limits of historical materialism in International Studies. The authors’ call for a ‘necessarily historical materialist moment’ in International Studies is interrogated by scholars working with historical materialist, feminist and decolonial frameworks in and beyond International Relations (IR)/International Political Economy (IPE). This introductory essay situates the book in relation to the wider concerns of historical materialist IR/IPE and outlines how the contributors assess the viability of Bieler and Morton’s historical materialist project.

scholarly journals Do the determinants of food security differ in improved rice variety adoption? Evidence from Sierra Leone

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 466-484
Author(s):  
Bashiru Mansaray ◽  
Shaosheng Jin
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Rice Variety ◽  
Switching Regression ◽  
Rice Varieties ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
The Government

AbstractThe Sierra Leonean government has implemented the improved rice varieties directed at enhancing more rice production to reduce food insecurity. This paper evaluates the food security effect of improved rice variety adoption using cross-sectional data collected in 2017 from a randomly selected sample of 624 rice farmers in Sierra Leone. The analysis uses the endogenous switching regression and propensity score matching (PSM) approach. The results revealed that the adoption of improved rice varieties has a significant positive effect on food security. That confirms the crucial role of improved rice variety adoption in increasing food production and food security. Therefore, the study recommended the intensification of policies that promote improved rice variety adoption, if more food production and food security are to be realized. Further, the government should continue the lead in rice variety promotion and dissemination and in enhancing an enabling environment for the effective adoption of farmers. Given the preponderant evidence of the different factors of food security, appropriate policies that seek to promote formal education, more income generation for farmers, and easy and credible access to farmland for landless farmers would enhance food security.

Locating the politics of a Sierra Leonean chiefdom

Africa ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 558-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Fanthorpe
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
Primary Means

The chiefdoms of Sierra Leone are institutions of colonial origin but nevertheless continue to serve as local government units in the post-colonial state. The prevailing view among scholars is that these institutions have little basis in indigenous political culture, and have furthermore become breeding grounds of political corruption. This view has tended to elide anthropological analysis of internal chiefdom politics. However, it is argued in this article that such conclusions are premature. With reference to the Biriwa Limba chiefdom of northern Sierra Leone, it is shown that historical precedent, in many cases relating to prominent political figures of the late nineteenth century, continues to serve as a primary means of ordering local rights in land, settlement and political representation. This phenomenon is not a product of innate conservatism but emerges rather as a pragmatic response to the persistent failure of successive Sierra Leone administrations to extend modern measures of citizenship to the bulk of the rural populace. Rights and properties have become progressively localised in villages originally registered for tax collection in the early colonial era. Here one finds one of the most telling legacies of the British policy of indirect rule in post-colonial Sierra Leone.

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