▪ Abstract Studies of natural resource wealth and civil war have been hampered by measurement error, endogeneity, lack of robustness, and uncertainty about causal mechanisms. This paper develops new measures and new tests to address these problems. It has four main findings. First, the likelihood of civil war in countries that produce oil, gas, and diamonds rose sharply from the early 1970s to the late 1990s; so did the number of rebel groups that sold contraband to raise money. Second, exogenous measures of oil, gas, and diamond wealth are robustly correlated with the onset of civil war. Still, these correlations are based on a small number of cases, and the substantive effects of resource wealth are sensitive to certain assumptions. Third, petroleum and diamond production lead to civil wars through at least three different mechanisms. Finally, the only resource variable robustly linked to conflict duration is a measure of “contraband,” which includes gemstones, timber, and narcotics.

A Closer Look at Oil, Diamonds, and Civil War

1. Twilight Institutions - An Introduction: Christian Lund (International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 2. Twilight Institutions. Public Authority And Local Politics In Africa: Christian Lund (International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 3. The Politics Of Vigilance In South-Eastern Nigeria: David Pratten (Oxford University). 4. Reordering Society. Vigilantism And Sovereign Expressions In Port Elizabeth's Townships: Lars Buur (Danish Institute for International Studies and Research Associate, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg South Africa). 5. Negotiating Authority - Between Unhcr And 'The People': Simon Turner (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen). 6. "It Was Satan That Took The People": The Making Of Public Authority In Burkina Faso: Sten Hagberg (Uppsala University). 7. Dealing With The Local State. The Informal Privatization Of Street-Level Bureaucracies In Senegal: Giorgio Blundo (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille). 8. Decentralization, Local Taxation And Citizenship In Senegal: Kristine Juul (Institute of Geography and International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 9. Contested Sources Of Authority. Re-Claiming State Sovereignty By Formalizing Traditional Authority In Mozambique: Lars Buur (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen) and Helene Maria Kyed (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen and International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 10. Statemaking And The Politics Of The Frontier In Central Benin: Pierre-Yves Le Meur (Groupe de recherche et d'echanges technologiques, Paris and IRD, Montpellier). 11. Decentralization, the state and conflicts over local boundaries in North-Western Ghana: Carola Lentz (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz). 12. Strong Bar, Weak State? Lawyers, Liberalism And State Formation In Zambia: Jeremy Gould (University of Helsinki).

Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa

In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics

The volatility of world oil markets, and the grumbling of American consumers over rising gas and heating oil prices over the last year, has highlighted a number of key trends in world oil markets: the rapidly growing demand for oil by China and India, the questionable status of some of the mega-oilfields in the Gulf, the aggressive nationalism of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and President Ahmadinejad in Iran, and not least the spill-over effects of the Iraqi insurgency across the Gulf. But there has been another presence contributing to this volatility, namely the deepening conflicts across, indeed the increasing ungovernability of the oil fields of the Niger Delta in Nigeria. A spectacular escalation in violent attacks on oil installations and abduction of oil workers beginning in December 2005 and January-February 2006 by a shadowy and largely unknown militant group MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta), have thrown into dramatic relief the enormous fragility of the Nigeria's oil econo...

Petro-Insurgency or Criminal Syndicate? Conflict & Violence in the Niger Delta

https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/54099/1/Seed_Network_Misconceptions_on_line_first.pdf

Farmer seed networks make a limited contribution to agriculture? Four common misconceptions

This article looks at four cases of youth-led identity-based social movements in Benin City and in the Annang area of southern Nigeria. It shows how each of these movements — youth associations, ‘area boys’, vigilantes and campus cults — draws on different, older repertoires of discourse and organization, and enters into relations with state authority that combine elements of complicity, insurgency, monitoring and disengagement. It argues that their activities, mobilized around resource control and community security, can be understood as a response to the Nigerian ‘politics of plunder’, endemic since the beginning of the oil boom, but locally perceived as having intensified from the 1990s onwards.

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The Politics of Plunder: The Rhetorics of Order and Disorder in Southern Nigeria

Vigilantism has become an endemic feature of the Nigerian social and political landscape. The emergence of night guards and vigilante groups as popular responses to theft and armed robbery has a long and varied history in Nigeria. Since the return to democracy in 1999, however, Nigeria has witnessed a proliferation of vigilantism: vigilante groups have organized at a variety of levels from lineage to ethnic group, in a variety of locations from village ward to city street, and for a variety of reasons from crime fighting to political lobbying. Indeed, vigilantism has captured such a range of local, national and international dynamics that it provides a sharply focused lens for students of Nigeria's political economy and its most intractable issues--the politics of democracy, ethnicity and religion. Contemporary Nigerian vigilantism concerns a range of local and global dynamics beyond informal justice. In the Yoruba-speaking south-west crime fighting has been led by the O'odua People's Congress (OPC) (Akinyele 2001; Nolte 2004, 2007); in the eastern states by the Bakassi Boys (Baker 2002b; Ukiwo 2002; Harnischfeger 2003; Smith 2004; Meagher 2007); and across the north by shari'a implementation committees or hisba (Last 2004; Casey 2007). Beyond fighting crime, these groups spearhead contemporary political contests between the politics of identity and citizenship, and represent divergent aspirations for Nigeria's future including a pro-shari'a movement in the north and ethnic nationalism in the west. Ongoing claims of extra-judicial executions and torture, combined with evidence that vigilante groups were involved in ethnic and religious clashes in 2000 and 2001, have brought censure from the international human rights community (Human Rights Watch 2002, 2003, 2004; Amnesty International 2002), attempts at prohibition by the federal government, and ongoing contests with local authorities over the right to judge and punish crimes. In short, these vigilantes have assumed a status synonymous with the fractured and violence-ridden image of Africa's most populous nation. A comprehensive history of vigilantism and policing in Nigeria is beyond the scope of this issue and in its localized plurality would prove elusive. However, it is evident that groups of young men or hunters based on lineage, compounds and urban wards were common precolonial bodies organized for the protection of person and property. Almost all types of jurisdictional authority operating beyond the sanction of the state were criminalized up to the Second World War. But by the 1940s a piecemeal authorization of systems of night guards had emerged across the country. This coincided both with a key moment of vulnerability for colonial security forces during the war and with a period of more effective reform in the colonial police. As Anderson and Killingray have noted, however, these improvements were 'to a large extent directed at strengthening the ability of the colonial state to coerce an increasing number of industrial, agrarian and political opponents more effectively' (Anderson and Killingray 1991:12). Indeed, across the continent colonial policing was far more concerned with the protection of property and with the maintenance of social order than with the prevention or detection of crime. Tamuno has argued that in Nigeria throughout the colonial period the distinction between soldiers and police was almost meaningless for the population at large and that the Nigeria Police Force has never shaken off its quasi-military origins (Tamuno 1970). Recent periods of military rule in the country, it is further suggested, have only served to accentuate the military character of the police force (Ekeh 2002). Fourchard's historical analysis in this collection disputes the commonly assumed watershed moments in the parallel development of Nigerian vigilantism. First, he demonstrates that popular responses to armed robbery did not commence in the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War, as is commonly understood, but rather emerged from the 1930s onwards and developed with the proliferation of firearms and the availability of cars from the late 1950s. …

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Introduction the Politics of Protection: Perspectives on Vigilantism in Nigeria

1. Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa: An Introduction Elizabeth Cooper and David Pratten PART I: SOCIAL CONTINGENCIES: BETWEEN SUSPICION AND THE SUBJUNCTIVE 2. Contingency: Interpersonal and Historical Dependencies in HIV Care Susan Reynolds Whyte and Godfrey Etyang Siu 3. Charity and Chance: The Manufacture of Uncertainty and Mistrust Through Child Sponsorship in Kenya Elizabeth Cooper 4. The Quest for Trust in the Face of Uncertainty. Managing Pregnancy Outcomes in Zanzibar Nadine Beckmann 5. Food Security, Conjugal Conflict, and Uncertainty in 'Bangladesh', Mombasa, Kenya Adam Gilbertson PART II: FUTURE VISIONS 6. Social Invisibility and Political Opacity. On Perceptiveness and Apprehension in Bissau Henrik Vigh 7. Rhythms of Uncertainty and the Pleasures of Anticipation Julie Soleil Archambault 8. Embracing Uncertainty. Young People on the Move in Addis Ababa's Inner City Marco Di Nunzio 9. 'We Wait for Miracles.' Ideas of Hope and Future Among Clandestine Burundian Refugees in Nairobi Simon Turner

Ethnographies of uncertainty in Africa

The saliency of Michel de Certeau’s work cannot be condensed into a paragraph, a page or even an entire article as the nature of his analysis defeats neat disciplinary categorisations. The number of intellectual biographies (Giard 1987, 1988; Giard et al. 1991; Geffré 1991; Ahearne 1995; Buchanan 2000; Ward 2000; Dosse 2002, 2006; Highmore 2006), and journal issues (Diacritics 1992 (22, 2), Social Semiotics 1996 (6, 1), New Blackfriars 1996 (77), Paragraph 1999 (22, 2) and South Atlantic Quarterly 2001 (100, 2)) devoted to his work and published since his death in 1986 attest to his broader influence. De Certeau’s work has therefore been revisited and reassessed in numerous disciplinary circles. Curiously, however, anthropology, so seemingly sponge-like in its theoretical fashions, has not engaged extensively with de Certeau’s work.2 This is despite the fact that de Certeau’s primary thematic concerns were peculiarly anthropological in nature. Issues of representation and resistance, marginality and minorities, power and plurality dominated his studies, which spanned topics as diverse as early modern mysticism, travel narratives of the new world, urban everyday life and contemporary policy on multi-culturalism. Furthermore, de Certeau was an architect of a theory of practice and of historical enquiry, both of which have gained considerable relevance to anthropological perspectives since the 1960s. We are not arguing here that de Certeau has been completely forgotten by anthropologists, of course (for examples see Pandolfi 1992; Ivy 1995; Ferme 2001; Hernândez 2002), but that his recognition in anthropology is very limited compared to that in other disciplines (history, literature, religious studies, cultural studies). So why has de Certeau’s thinking been so little used in our discipline? The papers collected here originated out of an attempt to consider this question. Each

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Michel de Certeau: Ethnography and the challenge of plurality

The starting point of this collection is to understand the positive and productive potential of uncertainty in Africa. The relevance of the focus on uncertainty in Africa is not only that contemporary life is objectively risky and unpredictable (since it is so everywhere and in every period), but that uncertainty has become a dominant trope, an ‘inevitable force’ (Johnson-Hanks 2005: 366), in the subjective experience of life in contemporary African societies. This routinized perception of uncertainty is sometimes coined as ‘the crisis’ — the conjunction of economic depression, instabilities, fluctuations, and ruptures — giving rise to experiences lived by people at all levels of society defined by physical and mental violence (Mbembe & Roitman 1995: 324). It is against this context of ‘incoherence, uncertainty, and instability’ that we may better account for the ways in which people weave their existence. Indeed, by foregrounding ‘crisis as context’ (Vigh 2006) we begin to see how uncertainty critically shapes ways of knowing and being on the continent. Hence, the analysis of radical, routinized uncertainty offers a productive conceptual apparatus to describe Africa’s complexity and to account for ‘the power of the unforeseen and of the unfolding…[and] people’s relentless determination to negotiate conditions of turbulence to introduce order and predictability into their lives’ (Mbembe & Nuttall 2004: 349).

David Pratten

Papers

The Politics of Plunder: The Rhetorics of Order and Disorder in Southern Nigeria

Introduction the Politics of Protection: Perspectives on Vigilantism in Nigeria

Ethnographies of uncertainty in Africa

Michel de Certeau: Ethnography and the challenge of plurality

Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa: An Introduction