Hunting Game: Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic

Description

Northeastern Central African Republic - a vast space bordering Chad, Darfur, and South Sudan - is a quintessential 'stateless' space, where the government has little presence and armed actors operate freely. In this first ethnographic and historical study of Central African raiding, Louisa Lombard investigates practices of forceful acquisition, a distinctive political repertoire in which claims to social status are linked to the ability to take (from wild spaces, or from others) and are frequently overturned. People have developed raiding skills to survive and live in a stateless borderland for over 150 years. From the trans-Saharan slave trade, to colonial forced labour regimes, big game hunting and coercive conservation, to rebellion, raiding has flourished where people's status in relation to each other is unclear and where institutional guidance is absent. Hunting Game offers rich comparative insights into the vibrant, if not always salutary, role that forceful acquisition plays in the world today.

Louisa Lombard is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, Connecticut. Her research focuses on African borderlands, politics, violence, sovereignty, peace-building, and conservation. She is the author of State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic (2016) and articles in journals such as Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, African Affairs, and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review.

'In this theoretically engaging new book, she explores how analysis of a "buffer zone" in northern CAR and its dynamics of raiding and hunting can enrich social science. The book is ethnographically very rich, and presents in an engaging way the vast experience of the author in northern CAR.' Valerio Colosio, PoLAR Online