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6 - Camouflage skills

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2020

Louisa Lombard
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

E. P. Thompson wisely noted that those who feel disenfranchised or otherwise disconnected from the law must defend their claims ‘by force or stealth’. But he left less explored what makes stealth work. To provide an insight, Chapter 6 investigates the plural, situational, and interpersonal ways in which people understand legitimate, or at least reasonable, access to taking in the hunting zone. Stealth, I argue, is less a matter of efficient hiding than of cultivating skills that allow blending in across different social and bureaucratic landscapes and greater access to their own acquisitive and status-related projects. I call these skills camouflage, in a nod to their hunter-like, non-pastoral tendencies. Camouflage is not just something state actors do in order to paper over the inconvenient or anomalous cases that might call attention to the limits of state ways of seeing. It is a skill that people develop in order to move in and out of institutional structures, a way to use those structures for their own gymnastic endeavours without drawing attention to the ways in which their practices cause the bars to creak or bend.

Type
Chapter
Information
Hunting Game
Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic
, pp. 146 - 166
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Camouflage skills
  • Louisa Lombard, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Hunting Game
  • Online publication: 20 April 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108778794.006
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  • Camouflage skills
  • Louisa Lombard, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Hunting Game
  • Online publication: 20 April 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108778794.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Camouflage skills
  • Louisa Lombard, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Hunting Game
  • Online publication: 20 April 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108778794.006
Available formats
×