Life after Guns

Reciprocity and Respect among Young Men in Liberia

By Abby Hardgrove

SERIES: Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

Rutgers University Press

Life After Guns explores how ex-combatants and other post-war youth negotiated a depleted and difficult social and cultural landscape in the years following Liberia’s fourteen-year bloody civil war. Unlike others who study child soldiers, Abby Hardgrove’s ethnography looks at both former combatants and also the youth who were not recruited to fight. She focuses on the structural constraints and household and family organizations that either helped or limited opportunities as these young men grew into adulthood. Whether young men fought or not, and whether they had cultural capital before the war or not, family relations mattered a great deal in how they fared after the war.

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Hardgrove's careful ethnography of post-war Liberia succeeds at one of anthropology's core missions: she undermines the stereotypes and easy answers standing in the way of true understanding and meaningful engagement.'
Danny Hoffman, author of The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia

Life after Guns is a much needed study about excombatant and other youth in the Liberian post-war reality. Hardgrove takes us beyond previous studies of excombatant youth only, showing the importance of a broader generational and relational perspective on both conflict and post-conflicts. Mats Utas, editor of African Conflicts and Informal Power: Big Men and Networks

Hardgrove's careful ethnography of post-war Liberia succeeds at one of anthropology's core missions: she undermines the stereotypes and easy answers standing in the way of true understanding and meaningful engagement.'
Danny Hoffman, author of The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia

Life after Guns is a much needed study about excombatant and other youth in the Liberian post-war reality. Hardgrove takes us beyond previous studies of excombatant youth only, showing the importance of a broader generational and relational perspective on both conflict and post-conflicts. Mats Utas, editor of African Conflicts and Informal Power: Big Men and Networks

ABBY HARDGROVE teaches at Kipp Central City Academy in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Acknowledgments

List of Acronyms

1 Introduction

2 A History of Violence

3 Reciprocity, Respect, and Becoming “Established”

4 Street Youth: Life on the Periphery

5 Life in Armed Groups

6 Life after Guns: Reintegration as Social Process

7 Conclusion: On Dominance and Discourse

References

Index