Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea Coast Societies

1. Introduction: Deconstructing Tropes of Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea Coast Societies
Christian K. Højbjerg, Jacqueline Knörr, William P. Murphy

Part I. (Re-)Configurations of Identifications and Alliances

2. Poro Society, Migration, and Political Incorporation on the Freetown Peninsula, Sierra Leone
Anaïs Ménard

3. Challenging the Classical Parameters of “Doing Host–Refugee Politics”: The Case of Casamance Refugees in The Gambia
Charlotte Ray

4. Betterment Versus Complicity: Struggling with Patron–Client Logics in Sierra Leone
Anne Menzel

5. Kinship Tropes as Critique of Patronage in Postwar Sierra Leone
William P. Murphy

Part II. Challenging Conventions of Explaining and Situating Violent Conflict

6. Grand Narratives of Crisis: Customary Conflicts as a Factor in the Liberian Civil War and Implications for Policy
David Brown

7. Historicizing as a Legal Trope of Jeopardy in Asylum Narratives and Expert Testimonies of Gender-Based Violence
Benjamin N. Lawrance

8. Revisiting Tropes of Environmental and Social Change in Casamance, Senegal
Martin Evans

9. Casamance Secession: National Narratives of Marginalization and Integration
Markus Rudolf

Part III. (Re-)Contextualizing Postcolonial Statehood and National Belonging

10. Transcending Traditional Tropes: Autochthony as a Discourse of Conflict and Integration in Postwar Krio/Non-Krio Relations in Sierra Leone
Sylvanus Spencer

11. Ethnicity as Trope of Political Belonging and Conflict: Cape Verdean Identity and Agency in Guinea-Bissau
Christoph Kohl

12. Dynamics in the Host–Stranger Paradigm: The Broker Role of a Latecomer Association in Western Côte d’Ivoire
Katharina Heitz Tokpa

Part IV. (Re-)Conceptualizing Development and Intervention

13. Roads as Imaginary for Employing Idle Youth in the Post-Conflict Liberian State
Jairo Munive

14. Tropes, Networks, and Higher Education in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone: Policy Formation at the University of Makeni
David O’Kane

15. Bulletproofing: Small Arms, International Law, and Spiritual Security in the Gambia
Niklas Hultin

Keywords: Political Science and International Relations, African Politics, Public Policy, Conflict Studies, Poverty, Aid and Development, Regional Development, Public Health