Socialist Peace? – Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country - Hardcover

Mcgovern, Mike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022645357X ISBN 13: 9780226453576

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2017

Synopsis

For the last twenty years, the West African nation of Guinea has exhibited all the characteristics that have correlated with civil wars in other countries, and Guineans themselves regularly talk about the inevitability of war tearing their country apart. Yet the country has narrowly avoided civil conflict again and again. In A Socialist Peace?, Mike McGovern asks how this was possible, how a nation could beat the odds and evade civil war. All six of Guinea's neighbors have experienced civil war or separatist insurgency in the past twenty years. Guinea itself has similar makings for it. It is rich in resources, yet its people are some of the poorest in the world. Its political situation is polarized by fiercely competitive ethnic groups. Weapons flow freely through its lands and across its borders. And, finally, it is still recovering from the oppressive regime of Sekou Toure. Yet it is that aspect which McGovern points to: while Toure's reign was hardly peaceful, it was successful often through highly coercive and violent measures at establishing a set of durable national dispositions, which have kept the nation at peace. Exploring the ambivalences of contemporary Guineans toward the afterlife of Tour 's reign as well as their abiding sense of socialist solidarity, McGovern sketches the paradoxes that can undergird political stability.

About this title

About the Author:

Mike McGovern is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Making War in C te d'Ivoire and Unmasking the State, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 022645357X
• ISBN 13: 9780226453576
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240