Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea Coast Societies: Change and Continuity
edited by Christian K. Højbjerg, Jacqueline Knörr, William P. Murphy (2016), New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
This book examines the radical changes in social and political landscape of the Upper Guinea Coast region over the past 30 years as a result of civil wars, post-war interventions by international, humanitarian agencies and peacekeeping missions, as well as a regional public health crisis (Ebola epidemic). The emphasis on ‘crises’ in this book draws attention to the intense socio-transformations in the region over the last three decades. Contemporary crises and changes in the region provoke a challenge to accepted ways of understanding and imagining socio-political life in the region – whether at the level of subnational and national communities, or international and regional structures of interest, such as refugees, weapon trafficking, cross-border military incursions, regional security, and transnational epidemics. This book explores and transcends the central explanatory tropes that have oriented research on the region and re-evaluates them in the light of the contemporary structural dynamics of crises, changes and continuities.
The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective
edited by Jacqueline Knörr and Christoph Kohl (2016), New York/Oxford: Berghahn.
For centuries, Africa’s Upper Guinea Coast region has been the site of regional and global interactions, with societies from different parts of the African continent and beyond engaging in economic trade, cultural exchange, and various forms of conflict. This book provides a wide-ranging look at how such encounters have continued into the present day, identifying the disruptions and continuities in religion, language, economics, and various other social phenomena that have resulted. These accounts show a region that, while still grappling with the legacies of colonialism and the slave trade, is both shaped by and an important actor within ever-denser global networks, exhibiting consistent transformation and creative adaptation.
The Powerful Presence of the Past. Integration amd Conflict Along the Upper Guinea Coast
edited by Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho (2010), Leiden: Brill.
This book conceptualizes integration and conflict as interrelated dimensions of social interaction, social relationships and alliances, identifications and identity constructions within society at large. In order to reach an in-depth understanding of integrative and violent forms of interaction in the region of the Upper Guinea Coast, authors take into account the impact and repercussions of specific historical experiences as well as the continuities and changes of social patterns affected by the interaction of local and globalized values, institutions, and models of social organization. Rather than providing an(other) analysis of wars and violence as such, contributors aim at a better understanding of the social mechanisms that affect both the processes of integration and conflict at the local, national and regional levels.
Women after War: Gender Mainstreaming and the Social Construction of Identity in Contemporary Sierra Leone
by Anita Schroven (2006), Münster: LIT Verlag.
After war, social conditions are often regarded as more open for changes and international organisations are therefore encouraged to promote women’s equal rights, utilising gender mainstreaming tools. These – sometimes inadvertently – affected the demobilisation program implemented after the civil war in Sierra Leone. On this program’s background, the book examines the conceptualisation of women as combatants and victims. Being marginalised but far from passive, they engage with these concepts and strategise to socially (re-)construct gendered identities in order to take part in the benefits of the programs.
Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast/West Africa (IC_UGC) 