The underneath of things : violence, history, and the everyday in Sierra Leone

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Title:

Author:

Ferme, Mariane C. (Mariane Conchita), 1959-

ISBN:

9780520225428

9780520225435

Personal Author:

Ferme, Mariane C. (Mariane Conchita), 1959-

Publication Information:

Berkeley: University of California Press, c2001.

Physical Description:

xii, 287 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Contents:

1. Immaterial Practices: Clues in a Modern Sierra Leonean Landscape -- Interlude 1: Weaving Cloth, Hair, and the Social World -- 2. Ambiguity and Gendered Practices -- 3. Strategies of Incorporation: Marriage and the Forms of Dependence -- Interlude 2: Splitting Kola -- 4. The House of Impermanence and the Politics of Mobility -- 5. Becoming a Kpako: The Body and the Aesthetics of Power -- Interlude 3: Clay, Palm Oil, and Temporality -- 6. Children and Their Doubles.

Subject Term:

Mende (African people) -- Material culture.

Mende (African people) -- Social life and customs.

Sex role -- Sierra Leone -- Kpuawala.

Landscape assessment -- Sierra Leone -- Kpuawala.

Geographic Term:

Kpuawala (Sierra Leone) -- Politics and government.

Kpuawala (Sierra Leone) -- Social life and customs.

Electronic Access:

Book review (H-Net) http://www.h-net.org/review/hrev-a0c9v9-aa
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/ucal042/00048845.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015744820	305.8963480664 F359U 2001	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In this erudite and gracefully written ethnography, Mariane Ferme explores the links between a violent historical and political legacy, and the production of secrecy in everyday material culture. The focus is on Mende-speaking southeastern Sierra Leone and the surrounding region. Since 1990, this area has been ravaged by a civil war that produced population displacements and regional instability. The Underneath of Things documents the rural impact of the progressive collapse of the Sierra Leonean state in the past several decades, and seeks to understand how an even earlier history is reinscribed in the present.