The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia

(Duke University Press) Hoffman uses ethnographic research with militia groups in Sierra Leone and Liberia to trace the path of young fighters who moved from grassroots community-defense organizations in Sierra Leone during the mid-1990s into a large pool of mercenary labor. He argues that in West Africa, space, sociality, and life itself are all organized to make young men available for dangerous work. Hoffman is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Seattle.