REVIEWER MEETS REVIEWED

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE RAI

War and embodied memory: becoming disabled in Sierra Leone

Thursday 16 October at 10.30 am (tea & coffee served from 10.00 am)

Royal Anthropological Institute, 50 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 5BT

THIS IS A FREE EVENT

The British Museum’s Anthropology Library and Research Centre, in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present the first seminar in the 2014-15 series of ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’, a discussion between Dr Maria Berghs, author of ‘War and embodied memory: becoming disabled in Sierra Leone’, and Dr Paul Basu, who reviewed the book for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

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’.

Bookings/enquiries: Ted Goodliffe ( TGoodliffe@britishmuseum.org)