The Roy A. Rappaport Lectures: A Socialist Peace? Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country

A Socialist Peace? Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country

This series of four lectures presents different parts of a book-length analysis of the politics, history and culture of the West African territory that came to be known as the Republic of Guinea. The book grew out of the question many Guineans and West African neighbors of Guinea have asked about why all six of Guinea's neighbors have experienced civil conflict while Guinea has not. This, despite the fact that many people feel that Guinea had more reasons than its neighbors why it "should have" experienced war or separatist insurgency. Guinea's 26-year experience of socialist rule may provide part of the answer. While the socialist government was intrusive and highly coercive, it also forged a sense of national identity and unity qualitatively different from anything existing in neighboring non-socialist countries. The study thus attempts to unravel the paradox of a peace that issues from a state's violence against its own citizens; a socialist habitus that provides the antidote to political schisms the state itself exacerbated.

2. Resentment: The Seeds of Violence Sown

This lecture explores one side of the legacies of the colonial and postcolonial periods that contributed to the conditions of possibility of civil war in Guinea. Stereotypes of people from the rainforest region of Guinea as backward and uncivilized compared to other Guineans created resentments still powerful today. Changes in laws around land ownership and use, and electoral competition under multiparty democracy introduced in the early 1990s gave these resentments new framing. The shift from socialist nationalism to liberal democracy introduced new ways of concretizing cultural and historical differences, and presented different stakes that made new forms of intercommunal violence thinkable.