Concerned Women of Buduburam , livre ebook

209

pages

English

Ebooks

2015

Écrit par
Elizabeth Holzer

Publié par
Cornell University Press

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209

pages

English

Ebooks

2015

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Cornell University Press

Date de parution

15 octobre 2015

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9781501701214

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

In The Concerned Women of Buduburam, Elizabeth Holzer offers an unprecedented firsthand account of the rise and fall of social protests in a long-standing refugee camp. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the host government of Ghana established the Buduburam Refugee Camp in 1990 to provide sanctuary for refugees from the Liberian civil war (1989-2003). Long hailed as a model of effectiveness, Buduburam offered a best-case scenario for how to handle a refugee crisis. But what happens when refugees and humanitarian actors disagree over humanitarian aid? In Buduburam, refugee protesters were met with Ghanaian riot police. Holzer uses the clash to delve into the complex and often hidden world of humanitarian politics and refugee activism.Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana and subsequent interviews with participants now returned to Liberia, Holzer exposes a distinctive form of rule that accompanies humanitarian intervention: compassionate authoritarianism. Humanitarians strive to relieve the suffering of refugees, but refugees have little or no access to grievance procedures, and humanitarian authorities face little or no accountability for political failures. By casting humanitarians and refugees as co-creators of a shared sociopolitical world, Holzer throws into sharp relief the contradictory elements of humanitarian crisis and of transnational interventions in poor countries more broadly.

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Publié par

Cornell University Press

Date de parution

15 octobre 2015

EAN13

9781501701214

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

TheConcernedWomenoBuduburam

TheConcernedWomeno Buduburam

RefugeeActivistsand Humanitarian Dilemmas

ElizabethHolzer

CornellUniversityPressIthaca and London

Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orparts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

Firstpublished2015byCornellUniversityPressFirstprinting,CornellPaperbacks,2015

PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Holzer, Elizabeth, author. The Concerned Women of Buduburam : refugee activists and humanitarian dilemmas / Elizabeth Holzer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5408-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8014-5690-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Refugees—Liberia. 2. Refugee camps—Ghana. 3. Refugees— Political activity—Ghana. 4. Humanitarian assistance—Ghana. I. Title. HV640.4.G45H65 2015 362.87′809667—dc23 2015010543

CornellUniversityPressstrivestouseenvironmentallyresponsiblesuppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing Paperback printing

10 9 8 10 9 8

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover photograph: Refugee women and Ghanaian police, Buduburam refugee camp, March 2008. Photograph by Elizabeth Holzer.

Contents

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: “The Midnight Hour in This Refugee Crisis”

Part I. Everyday Politics in Crisis1. Achieving Everyday Life in Humanitarian Crisis 2. Civic Engagement in the Refugee Camp 3.BifurcatedGovernmentality

Part II. Contentious Politics in Crisis4. The Concerned Women Protests 5.RefugeeDissentasaSocialProblem6.LegitimacyinRepression’sAftermath

Conclusion:CompassionateAuthoritarianismMethodological Appendix: Public Sociology and Private CompromiseReferencesIndex

vii 1

23 25 40 73

91 93 128 148

161 177 181 193

Acknowledgments

Iamgratefultothepeoplewhotookthetimetosharetheirstorieswithmeindifficult circumstances, especially the members of the Concerned Women, the Stakeholders, and theVisiongrace and public-spiritedness in the face of, whose crisis continue to inspire me. I am grateful also to my fellow researchers who worked in Ghana and Liberia and generously shared their insights: Anthony Nimley and Jelbeh Johnson, who contributed valued research assistance; and Samuel Agblorti, Susanne Tete, Jeff Crisp, Kaisa Akvist, Akosua Darkwah, Dörte Rompel, Guy Threlfo, and Tehila Sagy. ThisbookowesmuchtothesupportofmycolleaguesandfriendsattheUniversity of Connecticut’s Research Program on Humanitarianism, Human Rights Institute, and Department of Sociology. Cathy Schlund-Vials read the entire manuscript at a crucial juncture and gave valuable guidance. Eleni Coun-douriotis, Kathy Libal, Richard Wilson, Emma Gilligan, Gaye Tuchman, Manisha Desai, and Davita Glasberg read and offered insights on several selections. Susan Silbey, Sandy Levitsky, Bandana Purkayastha and Nancy Naples offered practical and professional support throughout. Chapters 2 and 3 benefited greatly from exchanges with Claudio Benzecry, Hallie Liberto, Jeremy Pais, Mike Wallace, Shauna Morimoto, Alice Kang, and Kristy Kelly. I presented earlier versions of Chapter 5 at the University of Mary Washington and the Law and Society Con-ference and received valuable feedback from Hui-Jung Kim and Mark Massoud. An earlier version of Chapter 6 received valuable feedback from Andreas Wim-mer, Ann Swidler, Silvia Pasquetti, and others at the 2010 Junior Theorists Sym-posium. The conclusion benefited enormously from debates on the alternatives

viii Acknowledgments

to refugee camps that I have participated in with Galya Ruffer, Zachary Lomo, Michael Kagan, Paula Banerjee, and others on the Sanctuary without Refugee Camps panel series at the Human Rights Institute 10th Anniversary Confer-ence and the 2014 International Association for the Study of Forced Migra-tion Conference. An earlier version of the Methodological Appendix received valuable feedback from Anna-Marie Marshall, Mark Suchman, Elizabeth Mertz, and others at the 2008 Midwest Law and Society Retreat. In its earlier life, this project benefited greatly from the support of my mentors, Myra Marx Ferree, Erik Wright, AiIi Tripp, Dave Trubek, Pam Oliver, and Ivan Ermakoff. Now, as it nears completion, I benefited greatly from advice and feedback from Roger Haydon, my editor at Cornell University Press, and the anonymous reviewers. This work was supported by the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, the National Science Foundation (0719733), the University of Connecticut’s Large Faculty Grant, and the Human Rights Institute’s Faculty Fellowship and Faculty Research Grant. Portions of the introduction and Chapter 2 were published inSociological Forum29 (2014): 774–800. Portions of Chapter 4 were published inJournal of Refugee Studies25 (2012): 257–281.

Introduction

“TheMidnightHourinThisRefugeeCrisis”

1 ‘Jayboy go inside!’My neighbor shouted to her thirteen-year-old son. Startled by the panic in her voice, I stumbled outside to see her. It was a Saturday morn-ing in the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana, West Africa. I had been here for eight months studying camp politics, living with about thirty-five thousand refugees from the Liberian civil war, a few hundred refugees from Sierra Leone and Côte D’Ivoire, and their Ghanaian neighbors. Across a dirt field where the kids usually played football, behind an evangelical church at the edge of the camp, I could see three men, running. ‘What’s happen-ing?’ I asked my neighbors crowded in the compound yard. Police had come for men, they told me. I noticed that no men stood among my neighbors. Thepolicehadcometoendprotestsbyrefugeewomenthathadstartedfive months ago. It was a gut-wrenching shock—they were peaceful protests, I thought. And what men? There were no men on the protest field. Ileftthecompoundandheadedtothefieldneartheentranceofthecampwhere the protesters had been gathering for the past month and a half. I witnessed

1.I use the following convention to convey the varying degrees of accuracy in quotes. Double quo-tation (“) marks signify a written or recorded phrase. Sometimes I edit the quotes slightly for clarity or conciseness. When I cut text within a quote, I indicate it like this (. . .). Single quotation marks (‘) signify a phrase recorded in field notes at the time or shortly enough afterward that I am extremely confident about the word choice. A quote without any marks indicates field notes where I am confident about the substance but not the word choice. Italicized phrases indicate commonplace utterances, not necessarily from any single transcript or field note but regularly enough said that even casual visitors to Buduburam should recognize them. I will use this convention throughout the text, even in the block quotes. All names are pseudonyms except for public officials.

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