Current Institutional Affiliation
Chair & Professor, African Studies Program, University of Washington
Award Information
International Dissertation Research Fellowship 2001
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award):
Anthropology, Duke University
The Kamajors of Sierra Leone: New Magic and the War-Machine
My research explores how the kamajor militia of Sierra Leone challenge conventional understandings of civil conflict and civil society in the post-Cold War nation-state, suggesting that anthropology and the growing inter-disciplinary field of critical security studies cannot understand or constructively engage the crises currently facing so many nations without particular attention to socio-politcal forces that operate largely outside the parameters of the nation-state.