State of Rebellion

Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic

Louisa Lombard

State of Rebellion

Louisa Lombard

Distributed for Zed Books

300 pages | 5 x 7 3/4 | © 2016
African Arguments
Paper $24.95 ISBN: 9781783608843 Published December 2016 For sale in North and South America only
Cloth $95.00 ISBN: 9781783608850 Published December 2016 For sale in North and South America only
In 2012, a wave of violence swept through the Central African Republic as Seleka rebels clashed with anti-Balaka militias. In the face of seemingly senseless bloodshed, journalists, politicians, and scholars struggled to account for the conflict’s origins. In this first comprehensive account of the violence, Louisa Lombard argues that the conflict was more than a straightforward religious clash between Christians and Muslims. Instead, she traces the roots of the conflict to fears of spiritual insecurity and a social breakdown that drove inter-communal violence.
 
Placing the uprising within its broader social, cultural, and historical context , Lombard reveals the complicated roles played by marginalized rural youths, local political leaders, and the global community in sustaining the conflict, and she offers an urgent corrective to our perceptions of this little-understood country, making a compelling case for international leaders to rethink their approach to resolving the conflict.
 
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and acronyms
Map of the Central African Republic
 
Introduction
1.  Conflict and the state in the peace-kept world
2. The nativeness of ‘foreign’ violence
3. Mobility as power
4. Long and short histories of rebellion
5. DDR and the frustration of desires for entitlement
6. War as the violence of the pack
7. World champion of peacekeeping
Conclusion
 
Notes
References
Index
 
Review Quotes
Paul Richards, author of No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts
“This valuable, indeed important, study helps us make sense of a little-known but strategically important African country. Those who wish to know Africa today need to know this book.”
Stephen W. Smith, Duke University
“If you want to understand why the CAR seems a perpetual work in regress, then Lombard’s book is a must-read. Her new perspectives illuminate a neglected recess of globalization.”
Marielle Debos, author of Living by the Gun in Chad
“With a stunning combination of conceptual clarity and vivid ethnography, Louisa Lombard’s book challenges conventional wisdom on the roots of violence in the CAR. A must-read for anyone wanting to engage with current debates on peace-building and state-building initiatives.”
Jean-François Bayart, Graduate Institute Geneva
“In this stimulating and provocative book, Lombard proposes a new approach to peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and humanitarian action that rests upon a politics of redistribution and acknowledgement of the social dignity of fighters lacking a state.”
Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley
“Provides a magisterial reading of the role of violence in the making of the CAR. Authoritative, nuanced, and empirically rich, Lombard offers a new and compelling lens through which so-called state failure and post-conflict transitions can be understood.”
African Affairs
“A must-read for comparativists and IR scholars interested in peacebuilding, the state, and African politics, as well as for policy makers involved with these issues in the CAR and beyond.”
Anthropological Quarterly
“Provides an in-depth discussion of the interventions that occur in response to moments of war and inter-war. Lombard’s book speaks to a broad audience while analyzing the forms of violence in Central African Republic (CAR) and the forms of intervention that have emerged in response.”
For more information, or to order this book, please visit https://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Political Science: Political and Social Theory

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