How do you become an 'amputee', 'war-wounded', 'victim' or 'disabled' person? This book describes how an amputee and war-wounded community was created after a decade long conflict (1991-2002) in Sierra Leone. Beginning with a general socio-cultural and historical analysis of what is understood by impairment and disability, it also explains how disability was politically created both during the conflict and post-conflict, as violence became part of the everyday. Despite participating in the neoliberal rebuilding of the nation state, ex-combatants and the security of the nation were the government’s main priorities, not amputee and war-wounded people.
In order to survive, people had to form partnerships with NGOs and participate in new discourses and practices around disability and rights, thus accessing identities of 'disabled' or 'persons with disabilities'. NGOs, charities and religious organisations that understood impairment and disability were most successful at aiding this community of people. However, since discourse and practice on disability were mainly bureaucratic, top-down, and not democratic about mainstreaming disability, neoliberal organisations and INGOs have caused a new colonisation of consciousness, and amputee and war-wounded people have had to become skilled in negotiating these new forms of subjectivities to survive.
Table of Contents:
Contents: Part I: Setting the scene: locating disability in Sierra Leone; Intersections between anthropology, disability, development and conflict; A general and socio-cultural analysis of impairment and disability; The political background of the creation of disability. Part II: Rebuilding and rehabilitating the nation state: creating national memory and disabled subjectivity?; Rebuilding the social world; Managing life as an individual?; Disability mainstreaming and social activism; Reparations, reintegration and peace; Looking to the future; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.
About the Author :
Maria Berghs is a Research Fellow in Health Sciences at the University of York, UK.
Review :
`In War and Embodied Memory Maria Berghs provides a masterful and scholarly account of the experiences of war-wounded people following the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone. It is essential reading for students, researchers and academics across all academic disciplines. No one with an interest in the creation of disability, poverty and inequality in the global south should be without it.’
Colin Barnes, University of Leeds, UK
`At times harrowing, at others hopeful, War and Embodied Memory is an important and timely exploration of disability, survival and resistance in post-conflict Sierra Leone. The engaging and accessible multi-layered analysis takes forward our understanding at both macro and micro levels and provides essential insights for anyone with an interest in disability studies, anthropology or global justice.’
Alison Sheldon, University of Leeds, UK
'War and Embodied Memory describes how an amputee and war-wounded community was created after a decade long conflict in Sierra Leone. Beginning with a general socio-cultural and historical analysis of what is understood by impairment and disability, it also aims to explain how disability was politically created both during the conflict and post-conflict, as violence became part of the everyday. Though the book covers vast intellectual ground, it remains compelling and persuasive throughout and effectively contributes essential ideas to studies of disability, post-conflict reconstruction, poverty and anthropology… Her extensive fieldwork in Sierra Leone allows Berghs to provide a compelling and well-rounded approach to conceptualising disability. Preconceptions of the conflict are immediately shed by the reader when Berghs recounts an interview with the frustrated chairman of the Amputee and War-Wounded Association (AWWA), a man whom she explains has dealt with countless outside organisations trying to help. He implores her to, `Ask us how we survive.’… The depth and scope of Berghs’ research and analysis cannot be given justice in this single review. Her contribution to this subject expertly moves from straightforward event recounting to complex analyses of the intricate philosophies involved in tackling not only the topic of becoming disabled in Sierra Leone, but the multitude of issues interwoven within it. Though the book covers vast intellectual ground, it remains compelling and persuasive throughout and effectively contributes essential ideas to studies of disability, post-conflict reconstruction, poverty and anthropology, among others.' LSE Review of Books
'This extraordinary book is a window into the lives of those who survived Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war with severe impairments. Berghs’ use of interviews provides a rich insight into the affected people’s strategies for getting by in their post-conflict communities. This would be enough to recommend it to readers, but there is more. The author also explores the cultural, economic and political barriers to full re-integration and the war wounded into communities and brings out the problems of stigma faced by affected women in particular…' African Geographical Review
'Berghs’ work goes into tremendous detail showing how post-civil war identities are shaped and promoted by the government, INGOs and other groups. Her work is a reminder of the continuing importance of exploring the social world of suffering. Berghs also makes a valuable contribution by avoiding the easy categorization of the people she studied. In this way her work is particularly good at representing the struggle for voice and dignity experienced by the participants in her research in Sierra Leone.' Somatosphere blog
'Whereas much of the literature in this field has concentrated on the work and lives of aid workers, or processes of institutional policy-making, Berghs focuses on the experience of `aid recipients’ and how their identities are ascribed by a succession of agencies upon whom they come to be dependent. In the words of one of Berghs’ informants: `First we were amputees, then we were victims, then persons with disabilities and now we are traumatized again’ (p. 188). This is one of the great strengths of the book: to demonstrate how those with impairments strategically align themselves with or internalize the discourses of different spheres of aid expertise - medicine, transitional justice, disability rights, trauma counselling - in their everyday lives in order to access resources, shelter, or livelihoods….there is much to commend the work. It certainly succeeds in complicating stereotypes of disablement and victimhood. Berghs worked with a group of people impaired by conflict who are both visible and vocal about their needs: `Ask us how we survive’, one of her informants insists (p. 3). At its best, War and embodied memory meets this challenge and provides valuable insight into their strategies for survival.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
'Maria Berghs’ War and Embodied Memory is not always an easy read but in spite of some of the horrendous content it is certainly an important and convincing book. Its analysis of extensive fieldwork describes how a community of amputated (and other war-wounded) people was created as a result of the horrific civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002), of which the dismembered (together with the child soldiers) became the symbol. … Berghs’ work makes a great contribution to our knowledge of the disrupting medical implications of fierce violence not only on individual lives but on a society as a whole, even after the conflict itself has long ceased. It shows the complexity of these situations and suggests some solutions, but also points out the conflicts that lie at their roots. And shows, therefore, how the simple solution `Just send in the (Western) marines’ is not enough to solve the problem and is more likely to be counter-productive. In short, I can only agree with Colin Barnes (University of Leeds) who says in his review on the Ashgate website of Berghs’ book `No one with an interest in the creation of disability, poverty and inequality in the global south should be without it’.' Medicine,Conflict and Survival
