Mariane C. Ferme

Social Pathways for Ebola Virus Disease in Rural Sierra Leone, and Some Implications for Containment

The current outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in Upper West Africa is the largest ever recorded. Molecular evidence suggests spread has been almost exclusively through human-to-human contact. Social factors are thus clearly important to understand the epidemic and ways in which it might be stopped, but these factors have so far been little analyzed. The present paper focuses on Sierra Leone, and provides cross sectional data on the least understood part of the epidemic—the largely undocumented spread of Ebola in rural areas. Various forms of social networking in rural communities and their relevance for understanding pathways of transmission are described. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between marriage, funerals and land tenure. Funerals are known to be a high-risk factor for infection. It is suggested that more than a shift in awareness of risks will be needed to change local patterns of behavior, especially in regard to funerals, since these are central to the consolidation of community ties. A concluding discussion relates the information presented to plans for halting the disease. Local consultation and access are seen as major challenges to be addressed.

Writings on the wall: Chinese material traces in an African landscape:

Much current scholarship on ‘Chinese–African relations’ focuses on the monumental projects, the built walls, which are visibly transforming African landscapes, and on the increasing Chinese physical presence on the continent. Instead, this article argues that a focus on the material traces of consumer goods circulating in colonial and post-colonial markets, and in expert knowledge that shaped bodily practices, domestic habits, and rural landscapes over time, yields a more nuanced picture of Chinese–African entanglements. We examine elements of “Chineseness” that inform Sierra Leonean ways of dwelling – particularly of farming rice, and of intervening therapeutically on bodies – but often through intermediaries whose imprints mask Asian origins. Contemporary China-Africa friendship rhetoric stresses bilateralism and palimpsestic reinscriptions of earlier relations, but belies a history in which multiple Chinas struggled for global recognition through partnerships with African countries that articulated with colonial mediations and Cold War alliances.

Archetypes of Humanitarian Discourse: Child Soldiers, Forced Marriage, and the Framing of Communities in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone

Transitional justice initiatives that sought to remedy the atrocities committed during the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone articulated particular notions of rights-bearing individuals and collectivities. This article critically examines assumptions about rural life and communities of belonging emerging from such initiatives and about the agency of women and children in particular. The signature indictments at the Special Court for Sierra Leone—for child soldier conscription and forced marriage—contributed to their establishment as archetypal figures in the discourse of humanitarian justice in ways that belied actual trial testimony. In particular, court arguments surrounding the forced marriage question highlighted the sometimes contradictory relationship between human rights and humanitarian law.

The underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone

In this erudite and gracefully written ethnography, Mariane Ferme explores the links between a violent historical and political legacy, and the production of secrecy in everyday material culture. The focus is on Mende-speaking southeastern Sierra Leone and the surrounding region. Since 1990, this area has been ravaged by a civil war that produced population displacements and regional instability. The Underneath of Things documents the rural impact of the progressive collapse of the Sierra Leonean state in the past several decades, and seeks to understand how an even earlier history is reinscribed in the present.