Violence and Belonging

The Quest for Identity in Post-Colonial Africa

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by Vigdis Broce-Due

Routledge

Due/Published April 2005, 288 pages, paper

ISBN 0415290074

Modernization in Africa has created new problems as well as new freedoms. Multi-party democracy, resource privatization, and changing wealth relationships have not always created stable and prosperous communities, and violence continues to be endemic in many areas of African life--from civil war and political strife to violent clashes between genders, generations, classes, and ethnic groups.

Violence and Belonging explores the crucial formative role of violence in shaping people's ideas of who they are in uncertain postcolonial contexts where, as resources dwindle and wealth is contested, identities and ideas of belonging become a focal area of conflict and negotiation. Focusing on fieldwork from across the continent, its case studies consider how routine, everyday violence ties in with wider regional and political upheavals, and how individuals experience and legitimize violence in its different forms. The Zimbabwean and Sudanese civil wars, Kenyan Kikuyu domestic conflicts, Rwandan massacres, and South African Truth and Reconciliation processes are among the contexts explored.

Contents

Preface
List of Contributors
1. Violence and Sociality Reconsidered: An Introduction, Vigdis Broch-Due
2. 'Nowadays they can even kill you for that which they feel is theirs': Gender and the Production of Ethnic Identity in Kikuyu-Speaking Central Kenya, Amrik Heyer
3. Conflicts in Context: Political Violence and Anthropological Puzzles, Harri Englund
4. Hunger, Violence and the Moral Economy of War in Zimbabwe, Jocelyn Alexander and Jo Ann McGregor
5. Violence and the Boundaries of Belonging: Comparing Two Border Disputes in the South African Lowveld, Isak Niehaus
6. Fertile Moral Links: Reconsidering Barabaig Violence, Astrid Blystad
7. 'Food Itself is Fighting With Us': A Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Sudan's Civil War on South Sudanese Civilian Populations Located in the North and the South, Sharon Elaine Hutchinson
8. The Politics of Identity and the Remembrance of Violence and Gender at the Installation of a Female Chief in Zimbabwe, Bjorn Lindgren
9. Double-Voiced Violence in Kenya, John G. Galaty
10. Escape from Genocide: The Politics of Identity in Rwanda's Massacres Johan Pottier
11. Women and the Politics of Identity: Voices in the South African Truth and Reconciliation, Fiona C Ross
12. Ambiguous Identities: Notioa of War and 'Significant Others' among the Tigreans of Ethiopia, Kjetil Tronvoll