Hunting the ethical state : the Benkadi movement of Cote d'Ivoire / Joseph Hellweg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hellweg, Joseph.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Crime prevention--Cote d'Ivoire--Citizen participation--History--20th century.

Crime prevention.

Social movements--Cote d'Ivoire--History--20th century.

Social movements.

Hunting customs--Cote d'Ivoire.

Hunting customs.

Africans--Cote d'Ivoire--Rites and ceremonies.

Africans.

Sacrifice--Social aspects--Cote d'Ivoire.

Sacrifice.

Islamic occultism--Social aspects--Cote d'Ivoire.

Islamic occultism.

Côte d'Ivoire--History--1993-.

Côte d'Ivoire.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (309 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the 1990s a nationwide crime wave overtook Côte d'Ivoire. The Ivoirian police failed to control the situation, so a group of poor, politically marginalized, and mostly Muslim men took on the role of the people's protectors as part of a movement they called Benkadi. These men were dozos-hunters skilled in ritual sacrifice-and they applied their hunting and occult expertise, along with the ethical principles implicit in both forms of knowledge, to the tracking and capturing of thieves. Meanwhile, as Benkadi emerged, so too did the ethnic, regional, and religious divisions that would culminate in Côte d'Ivoire's 2002-07 rebellion. Hunting the Ethical State reveals how dozos worked beyond these divisions to derive their new roles as enforcers of security from their ritual hunting ethos. Much as they used sorcery to shape-shift and outwit game, they now transformed into unofficial police, and their ritual networks became police bureaucracies. Though these Muslim and northern-descended men would later resist the state, Joseph Hellweg demonstrates how they briefly succeeded at making a place for themselves within it. Ultimately, Hellweg interprets Benkadi as a flawed but ingenious and thoroughly modern attempt by non-state actors to reform an African state.

Contents:

Mestizo dozos: sacrifice, shape-shifting, and the state

Criminal instability: history, identity, and mimesis in a state of exception

Dozos at home and on the hunt

Sacrificing for security

Disappearance as power: Islam and the secret history of Manimory

Organizing Benkadi

Stalking crime

The power in the Nightjar's call: dozo performance as social drama

Conclusion: from civic duty to civil war.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-279) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786613362599

9781283362597

1283362597

9780226326559

0226326551

OCLC:

772845715