It is hardly surprising that the ten year civil war in Sierra Leone has changed the economic, social, political, moral, and other landscapes of Sierra Leonean society. These changes have been alluded to in one essay or the other but there is not yet a major work that has either interrogated these changes in totality or—from a critical cultural perspective—examined the emergence of “new” cultural forms that challenge political, social, economic and religious discourses and practices around what it means to be in post-war Sierra Leone. We intend this book to fill that vacuum. Essays in this book will look at the dynamic social, political, economic, religious and other processes operating in a contested post-war terrain in which different voices and ways of being have become possible.

Most observers of post-war societies focus at the level of the state, or security, or legislative changes. This privileging of the formal leaves out the vast terrain of the actual lived experiences of people, where we believe real social change takes place. We hope to turn from the “masculine” realms of politics and power towards the “feminine” realms of the everyday; acknowledging that war is a total social phenomenon, not just a strategic game played by rational (male) political actors with lamentable consequences for the (female) victims of conflict. By including multiple perspectives on the social transformations in post-war Sierra Leone, we hope to present a more nuanced picture of the total effects of war on society. Through empirical examples of transformations in practice and discourse, we will paint a picture of the shifting social and political landscape in which people in Sierra Leone, drawing on multiple discursive and material resources, are creatively struggling to make their everyday lives, and in the process, remaking their society.

Tentatively titled Everyday Lives in Postwar Sierra Leone, the editors of this collection welcome scholarly submissions from the humanities and social sciences that engage with a range of these changes. Contributors may be guided by, but are not limited to, the following topics, themes and sub-themes:

Gender
The financial and political power of market women (travel to Banjul, Guinea, then Dubai, China, etc.)
Women as heads of household
New occupational gender roles (male hairdressers, women breaking stones)

Urbanization
New housing patterns in Freetown
Culture in the slums

Livelihoods
Impact of skills training: gara tie dying, soap making, hairdressing, etc.
Okada drivers
Water carriers
Rasta beadwork and crochet

Political Participation
Youth politics
Popular Music
Human rights
Spread of community radio stations

Cultural Studies
Fashion (Guinea Guinea vs. junks)
Food
“sensitized, empowered, and capacitated” NGO-ization of the language (also use of military terms in Krio: deploy, pull out, reki
J.C. and “home base” phenomenon (importing cars, building big houses)
Football (loss of support for local teams and increase of interest in British clubs)

Religion
Rise of evangelical churches and mega-churches
Veiling (new sources of Muslim identity)

International intervention
Mushrooming of NGOs
Human Rights as a resource for civil society

Interested authors, please send an abstract of your proposed contribution and a short CV to the editors, Aisha Fofana Ibrahim (mamaisha@gmail.com) and Susan Shepler (Shepler@american.edu) by 31 July 2009.