Description:
During the war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002), members of various rebel movements kidnapped thousands of girls and women, some of whom came to take an active part in the armed conflict alongside the rebels. In a stunning look at the life of women in...
Brief description: Chris Coulter is a Project Director at indevelop., a Swedish consulting company working for sustainable social development. She is also affiliated with the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University.
Review Quotes:
The book is an unsettling close-up of girls' and young women's everyday lives during and after the war. Coulter describes abduction, rape and all-pervasive violence in much greater detail than most anthropologists have dared to. She also scrutinizes the challenges that women face during demobilization, and the difficulties of reintegration and reconciliation.... Its disturbingly detailed ethnographic gaze on violence, its focus on the choiceless decisions that women (and many men) faced during the war, and on the ills of post-war reconciliation and reintegration, make it a highly recommendable book for any anthropologist who wants to learn about everyday reality in a war-torn society.
--Toomas Gross "Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society"