Hybridization, Intervention and Authority: Security Beyond Conflict in Sierra Leone

Description

This book explains how security is organized from the local to the national level in post-war Sierra Leone, and how external actors attempted to shape the field through security sector reform. Security sector reform became an important and deeply political instrument to establish peace in Sierra Leone as war drew to an end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through historical and ethnographic perspectives, the book explores how practices of security sector reform have both shaped and been shaped by practices and discourses of security provision from the national to the local level in post-war Sierra Leone. It critiques how the notion of hybridity has been applied in peace and security studies and cultural studies, and thereby provides an innovative perspective on IR, and the study of interventions. The book is the first to take the debate on security in Sierra Leone beyond a focus on conflict and peacebuilding, to explore everyday policing and order-making in rural areas of the country. Based on fieldwork between 2005 and 2018, it includes 200+ interviews with key players in Sierra Leone from the National Security Coordinator and Inspector-General of Police in Freetown to traditional leaders and miners in Peyima, a small town on the border with Guinea. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security, anthropology, African politics and IR in general. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments 1. Introduction The discourse of state-building Hybridization and its productive effects Hybridization as transformation Simultaneity of authority and the subject Chapters of the book Notes 2. The rise and fall of security sector reform in development War-shattered states, SSR and market democracies Merging security and development with justice and security programming Securitization of development or developmentalization of security? The US, SSR and the effects of 9/11 Amalgamating security and development in the UK and the emergence of SSR Sierra Leone’s role in shaping SSR International debates on military expenditure How institutional turf wars shaped SSR SSR moves, meets and morphs Separating state and non-state and the multi-layered approach Conclusion Notes 3. Collapse, chaos and resurrection Sierra Leone’s failure: underdeveloped and chaotic The disappointment of patrimonial promises External and internal factors leading to collapse From patrimonial failure to violent conflict Sierra Leone and the UK The chaos of state collapse The order of chaos Stabilization through purification Norman, Sankoh and Johnny Paul Operation Palliser SSR as state-building: embedding hybrid reproduction Conclusion Notes 4. Hybridization and the authority of chiefs The emergence of chiefs The chiefdom and the expression of hybridization Post-colonial Sierra Leone The legal existence of today’s chiefs Hybridity, origin and owning authority in Peyima Challenging the chief and the origin of Peyima The death of a boy, the lack of diamonds and the dark world The constitution of hybridization Conflict, caretaker chiefs and the return of the old guard Conclusion Notes 5. The interplay of police reform and hybridization A decade of state-building through police reform Approaching the justice and security field holistically Chiefs and state-building The simultaneous processes of separation and positive accommodation The politics of hybridization Conclusion Notes 6. The chiefs of community policing Origins: Local Policing Partnership Boards Policing, community and chiefs Urban LPPBs and their potentially transformative effects Altruism, business and politics Organizational structures of the LPPB and their role in order-making The death of a boy: its criminal implications A case of theft, and the reproductive effects of the LPPB Conclusion Notes 7. Secrets, strangers and order-making The Poro and the localization of power Producing authority in concrete physical space The Temnes and the ubiquitous threat of the Poro Boundaries, violence and land disputes Taylor’s search for authority The Poro and the Kondehs’ loss of land Non-Kono members of the Poro society When the police and the Poro interact The criminal act of forced initiation and its aftermath The Poro and police reform Conclusion Notes 8. Hybridization in a case of diamond theft Unfolding a case of diamond theft Two miners and a stone Involvement of the paramount chief The necessity of hybridization The paramount chief as gatekeeper: ritualizing chiefly power Visualizing hybridity: from Kamara to Motema The aftermath The rule of hybridization through the interlocking of authority The diamond dealer Conclusion Notes 9. Conclusion Opening up the conundrum: hybridization Paramount and lesser chiefs Hybridization, chiefs and the implications for SSR References Index