Coastal Sierra Leone

A rich ethnographic account of young West African fisherfolk navigating a precarious social and economic environment shaped by ecological crisis, war, and secrecy.

This vivid ethnography, describing the precarious lives of fisher folk in post-war Sierra Leone, offers fresh perspectives on themes of gender, youth, gift exchange, and secrecy. Everyday life in this fragile frontier economy is shaped both by a global ecological crisis and a local history of war, slavery, and esoteric practice.Against the backdrop of a threadbare post-war state and a global marine ecology in treacherous decline, Jennifer Diggins offers a dynamic account of post-war Sierra Leone, through the examination of a precarious frontier economy and those who depend on it. The book traces how understandings of intimacy, interdependence, and exploitation have been shaped through a history of indentured labour, violence, and gendered migration; and how these relationships are being renegotiated once more in a context of deepening economic uncertainty. At its core, this is about the material substance of human relationships. One can go a long way towards mapping the town's shifting networks of friendship, love, and obligation simply by watching the vast daily traffic in gifts of fish exchanging hands on the wharf. However, these mundane social and economic strategies are often inflected through a cultural dynamic of 'secrecy', and a shared sense of the unseen forces understood to inhabit the material world.