Hybridisation in a Case of Diamond Theft in Rural Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT

Drawing on cultural studies, the concept of hybridity has emerged in peace and conflict studies as an important critique of the fragile failed/state discourse, and the binaries whereby the modern state is often contrasted with traditional or non-state actors. The concept is also challenged for reproducing the very binaries that it seeks to overcome and lacking analytical vigour. The paper addresses these critiques by exploring a case of diamond theft in rural Sierra Leone. It suggests an analytical shift from interaction between state institutions (police) and non-state authorities (traditional leaders) to focusing on processes of hybridisation through the enactment and performativity of authority. This is an analytical move from preconceived cultural and political entities to the subject and the simultaneous quality of how he or she assembles and projects authority. It is in the subject’s strategies and practices at the micro level that we clearly see how hybridisation processes occur.

KEYWORDS:

• Sierra Leone
• hybridity
• simultaneity
• chiefs
• security and justice

Acknowledgments

Thank you to a number of people who made useful comments at different stages of finalising this paper: Lars Buur, Anna Leander, Eric Scheye, Mats Utas, Finn Stepputat, Kasper Hoffmann and Marianne Mosebo. Thank you also to the three anonymous reviewers and the editors of Ethnos who made a number of comments that helped to sharpen the paper’s argument considerably.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The concept of hybridity is used in many more social science disciplines than outlined here, including in anthropology, where it has been used to conceptualise globalisation (Robbins & Sijkala 2014), life spheres (Sheller & Urry 2003), art (Papastergiadis 2005), identities (Chambers 1994) and so forth.

2. The paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork that was carried out in 2008–2009 in Peyima, a small town in Kamara Chiefdom, Kono District (shorter visits to Peyima took place in 2012–2014). Peyima's approximately 2000 inhabitants generate income and livelihood from diamond mining and farming. Over 100 interviews and conversations were carried out with a broad cross-section of Peyima's population, relevant authorities in Tombodu (the headquarter town of Kamara Chiefdom) and Koidu (the headquarter town in Kono District). The data were organised around general patterns of how security and justice are provided/managed at the local level, by whom, and with what implications.

3. The police collapsed during Sierra Leone's civil war in 1991–2002. By the early 2000s, it only operated in a few of Sierra Leone's urban centres, and had a dismal reputation among members of the public. Police reform was initiated in the late 1990s during open conflict, and community policing forums – Local Policing Partnership Boards (LPPBs) – became central to how the process developed locally (Albrecht et al. 2014). LPPBs were established by the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) to ensure stakeholder participation in policing and rebuild community–police relations. LPPB members are drawn from a cross-section of society and expected to support the investigation and resolution of conflict between members of the community (Albrecht 2015: 617–618; Albrecht & Jackson 2014).

4. Important insight into alluvial mining and livelihood provisioning in rural Sierra Leone can be found in Pijpers (2011). Additional information on the history of alluvial mining can be found in Fanthorpe and Maconachie (2010).

5. In Peyima specifically, and West Africa in general, many boys must and can in principle be initiated into the Poro secret society in order to become adult men in the locale in which they were born (there are other societies). Initiates are taught about farming, hunting, herb techniques, rules of the culture and structures of authority (see Fulton 1972: 1222).

6. The ‘supporter’ is different from the ‘investor’. The supporter operates at the local level with a license to do alluvial mining in a specifically demarcated area. Investors, on the other hand, deal with capital-intensive mining, which is still alluvial, but performed with help of ‘caterpillar’ machines that cost US$1000 to rent per day (see Fanthorpe & Maconachie 2010: 262).