Unsettled authority and humanitarian practice: reflections on local Iegitimacy from Sierra Leone’s borderlands

ABSTRACT

Calls to localise humanitarian practice and to engage communities in emergency responses have gained prominence in recent years. Using the case study of the response to the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, this article probes into the assumptions underlying efforts to mobilise ‘community stakeholders’ to legitimise emergency measures, revealing how they envision authority within communities as static and independent of experiences of humanitarian intervention. Drawing inspiration from Raufu Mustapha’s intellectual legacy, it shows the limitations of these assumptions by paying attention to structural factors, historical legacies, and the empirical workings of power. Through an ethnographic account of how the Ebola response was experienced and remembered in a remote border town, the article proposes instead the concept of unsettled authority. Stories from these borderlands show how the legitimacy of local authority was dynamically negotiated, made and unmade, through encounters with humanitarian interventions as these became intertwined with longer-term contestations of power with unpredictable consequences.

KEYWORDS:

• Sierra Leone
• humanitarianism
• political participation
• epidemic response
• local legitimacy

Acknowledgments

This paper is dedicated to Raufu Mustapha’s memory, in gratitude for his teaching. I would also like to thank Susan Shepler, Gillian McKay, Jamie Hitchen, Portia Roelofs, the Guest Editors and two anonymous peer reviewers for insightful feedback. I am also grateful to participants of the workshop “Celebrating the Legacy of Abdul Raufu Mustapha”, and in particular Kate Meagher for her suggestions. I am indebted to Maseray Fofanah, Fouad Bangura, the elders of Senabee and Alimamy for their assistance and patience. Any errors remain my own. The research and writing for this paper were made possible by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (Fellowship Reference No. ES/N01717X/1).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The name has been changed

2. Relations between landlords and strangers have been central to explaining authority, hierarchy and social dynamics in the Upper Guinea Coast, as the region was (and remains) characterized by migratory patterns as well as conquest and integration through norms of hospitality and reciprocity (Brooks, 1993).

3. An ethno-linguistic group considered to be indigenous to Sierra Leone

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/N01717X/1].

Notes on contributors

Luisa Enria

Luisa Enria is Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health and Development at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her interests are in political anthropology, with a focus on conflict and health emergencies. Her research in Sierra Leone has explored post-war political violence, experiences of the Ebola epidemic and medical research and, more recently, epidemic preparedness and vaccine hesitancy. She is the author ofThe Politics of Work in a Post-Conflict State: Youth, Labour and Violence in Sierra Leone (James Currey, 2018).