Coastal Sierra Leone

Materiality and the Unseen in Maritime West Africa

Jennifer Diggins

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781108471169
• eBook ISBN: 9781108624626
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Against the backdrop of a threadbare post-war state and a global marine ecology in treacherous decline, Jennifer Diggins offers a dynamic account of post-war Sierra Leone, through the examination of a precarious frontier economy and those who depend on it. The book traces how understandings of intimacy, interdependence, and exploitation have been shaped through a history of indentured labour, violence, and gendered migration; and how these relationships are being renegotiated once more in a context of deepening economic uncertainty. At its core, this is about the material substance of human relationships. One can go a long way towards mapping the town's shifting networks of friendship, love, and obligation simply by watching the vast daily traffic in gifts of fish exchanging hands on the wharf. However, these mundane social and economic strategies are often inflected through a cultural dynamic of 'secrecy', and a shared sense of the unseen forces understood to inhabit the material world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of maps
• Acknowledgements
• A note on translation
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Context, history, methods
• 3 Economic runaways
• 4 Plantain Island sirens
• 5 ‘Potato rope’ families
• 6 Occult economies and hidden topographies
• 7 Material words
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index