In Culture and Conflicts in Sierra Leone Mining: Strangers, Aliens, Spirits, the author uses Sierra Leone as a case study to contribute to the debates on the causes and nature of mineral resource conflicts in Africa. Unlike many works that focus on the political economy and political ecology of large-scale diamond mining conflicts, this book’s goal is to add to the limited literature on the persistent discord in mining areas. In so doing, the book integrates cultural conflict dimensions in analyzing the mineral commodity chain, primarily the clash between the centuries-old customary landlord-stranger land governance institution and state mining laws with colonial vestiges. It shows that these cultural conflicts challenge the effective development of the mining sector, including establishing artisanal mining as a viable complementary livelihood to farming for rural populations.

This is the most authoritative study of the Sierra Leone civil war to emanate from Africa, or indeed any publications' programme on Africa. It explores the genesis of the crisis, the contradictory roles of different internal and external actors, civil society and the media; the regional intervention force and the demise of the second republic. It analyses the numerous peace initiatives designed to end a war, which continued nonetheless to defy and outlast them; and asks why the war became so prolonged. The study articulates how internal actors trod the multiple and conflicting pathways to power. It considers how non-conventional actors were able to inaugurate and sustain an insurgency that called forth the largest concentration of UN peacekeepers the world has ever seen.

Klare argues that wars in the near future will be fought over the control of dwindling natural resources like oil and water.

A journey through the history of African popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Fighting for the Rain Forest' explores the roots of the civil war in Sierra Leone and its manifestations in the forests amongst the country's youth.

The first comprehensive account of the linkage between natural resources and political and social conflict in Africa.

This book provides a fresh and extensive discussion of corruption issues in natural resources sectors. Reflecting on recent debates in corruption research and revisiting resource curse challenges in light of political ecology approaches, this volume provides a series of nuanced and policy-relevant case studies analyzing patterns of corruption around natural resources and options to reach anti-corruption goals. The potential for new variations of the resource curse in the forest and urban land sectors and the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies in resource sectors are considered in depth. Corruption in oil, gas, mining, fisheries, biofuel, wildlife, forestry and urban land are all covered, and potential solutions discussed.