Love and violence in Sierra Leone : mediating intimacy after conflict / Luisa T. Schneider.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schneider, Luisa T. (Luisa Theresia), 1991- author.

Series:

international African library ; 73.

The international African library ; 73

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intimate partner violence--Sierra Leone.

Sexual assault--Law and legislation--Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone--Social conditions--1961-.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 264 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridgef ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Summary:

In the decades following the civil war that took place in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002, new laws were passed to rebuild the state, and to prevent rape, teenage pregnancy and domestic violence. In this ethnography, Luisa T. Schneider explores the intricate semantic, empirical and socio-legal dynamics of love and violence in post-conflict Sierra Leone, challenging the oversimplification of these phenomena. Schneider underscores the limitations of imposing singular interpretations on love and violence, advocating for a nuanced, phenomenological approach that reveals how state and institutional attempts to regulate violence and loving relationships without considering local lived experience and meaning-making can yield negative consequences. By analysing how love and violence are historically constituted, experienced, and (re)produced across personal, social, legal, and political levels, this book critiques the construction of violence within gendered sexual relationships by development agencies, law makers and politicians, urging them to engage with local knowledge and experience. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Contents:

Access, methodology and ethics

The impact of violence on relationships

Loving and living relationships in Freetown today

The spectrum of violence in relationships

The language of violence

Household and community mediations of violence

Invoking the state : when adults report violence in their relationships to the police

Minors before the law : building futures, policing sex

Perpetrators? The consequence of the Sexual Offences Act for young men.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 28 Jan 2025).

ISBN:

9781009532983

1009532987

9781009533027

1009533029

9781009532990

1009532995

Access Restriction:

Open Access. Unrestricted online access