Customer Reviews

Class Ethnicity and Politics in Liberia

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A lot of people today know Liberia for Taylor's wars and the business of blood diamonds, but know little about the background of the causes related to those conflicts. Hlophe's work (especially if read together with Osaghae's work on the Liberian "ethclass" question [1996:CODESRIA], and Levitt's work on all of Liberia's 18 major conflicts [2005:Carolina Academic Press]) will provide you with a good broad analysis of what was wrong in Liberian society, and why it is not surprising at all that the country ended up in the hands of a tyrant and then a warlord, respectively. Perhaps the most important contribution that Hlophe made through this work is a deep analysis of the "corporate family network" which formed the Liberian state's ruling class (True Whig Party). It is a specifically Liberian brand of neo-patrimonialism that at once appears to cut across ethnic lines but which ultimately consolidated ethnic hierarchy in the state's formal institutions. Hlophe's work is very important in understanding how (ethnic) power relations operate in Liberian business, governance, church, judiciary, schools, youth groups and so on - all relevant today as the recent wars have only strengthened the prestige of Americo-Liberianism in Liberian society, given their strong links to the diaspora and foreign money. This is a very important piece of work for those who may wish to become involved in post-conflict reconstruction in Liberia with their eyes opened, who need to understand the history of the ethnic character of power relations/elite formation and the institutions which they worked through.