Anne Menzel

Betterment Versus Complicity: Struggling with Patron–Client Logics in Sierra Leone

Patron–client logics have long provided a crucial lens for the analysis and interpretation of sociopolitical imagination and agency in the Upper Guinea Coast and even in Sub-Sahara Africa in general. However, this lens also comes with limitations: as long as one expects patron–client relations, there is a good chance that one will (only) find relations that fit the patron–client picture. Menzel’s chapter explores a different perspective. Based on field research in southern Sierra Leone, she provides examples from interviews in which her informants not only voiced frustrations over a lack of “good” patronage but also hinted at more fundamental struggles. These examples indicate a contradiction between working toward individual/societal betterment and complicity in patron–client logics, which cement an undesirable status quo.

Peacebuilding: am Scheideweg – oder in der Sackgasse?

Peacebuilding: At a Crossroads – or at a Dead End? Abstract: We present a critical overview of the current debate on the use, scope, and effectiveness of peace building. Most notably, we analyze to what extent recent academic publications sufficiently reflect problematic aspects of current practices. The focus is on developments in the research on peace building concerning strategies, which have been and still are being implemented by political institutions and actors in the field: Local ownership and the coordination and integration of various peace building actors. We arrive at the conclusion that it is worthwhile practically as well as analytically necessary to give up concepts of social engeneering steering and alternatively develop ways to systematically cope with the lack of knowledge.