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ECONOMIC RUNAWAYS: PATRONAGE, POVERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF ‘FREEDOM’ ON SIERRA LEONE'S MARITIME FRONTIER

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Jennifer Diggins
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Abstract

As a result of the autopsy of Sierra Leone's civil war, we have become familiar with a rather dystopian vision of ‘traditional’ economic life in that region. Combatants often described their family villages as spaces where profound inequalities were hidden within households; where labour exploitation was woven through kinship relations. This article follows several young men who fled conditions of bonded labour in their rural homes: not to join the war but to seek a new life in the commercial fishing economy. Elsewhere across the postcolonial world, there is a rich ethnographic literature illustrating that people on the fringes of the global capitalist order respond with profound unease as their economic lives become ever more strongly regulated by impersonal market forces. Less often acknowledged is the possibility that, for some people, in some contexts, severing social relations might be exactly what they want, and that therein lies the greatest appeal of an economic life characterized by market transactions. For the young men described in this article, commercial fishing appeared to offer a level of personal ‘freedom’ unimaginable within the patron–client structures of village life. However, most find themselves drawn rapidly back into new forms of extractive relationships.

Résumé

L'autopsie de la guerre civile en Sierra Leone a eu pour conséquence de nous familiariser avec une vision plutôt dystopienne de la vie économique « traditionnelle » dans cette région. Les combattants décrivaient souvent le village de leur famille comme un espace où se cachaient de profondes inégalités entre les ménages, et où l'exploitation de la main-d’œuvre était tissée par les relations de parenté. Cet article suit plusieurs hommes jeunes qui ont fui une situation de servitude pour dettes dans leur foyer rural : non pour s'engager dans la guerre, mais pour chercher une nouvelle vie dans le secteur de la pêche commerciale. Ailleurs dans le monde postcolonial, il existe une riche littérature ethnographique illustrant le fait que les personnes en marge de l'ordre capitaliste mondial réagissent avec un profond malaise lorsque leur existence économique est de plus en plus régulée par des forces de marché impersonnelles. On reconnaît moins souvent la possibilité que, pour certaines personnes et dans certains contextes, rompre les relations sociales peut être précisément ce qu'elles souhaitent, et qu'en cela réside le plus grand attrait d'une vie économique caractérisée par des transactions de marché. Pour les hommes jeunes décrits dans cet article, la pêche commerciale paraissait offrir un niveau de « liberté » personnelle inimaginable au sein des structures de vie patron-client dans les villages. Cependant, la plupart d'entre eux ont finalement été rapidement attirés par de nouvelles formes de rapports extractifs.

Type
West African mobilities
Information
Africa , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 312 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2015 

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