page_title: Paul Richards (anthropologist)
section_title: Work on war
hierarchical_section_title: Paul Richards (anthropologist) / Work on war
caption_attribution_description: English: Paul Richards (*1945). Seminar Mende/Hofstra at African Studies Centre, Leiden (The Netherlands)
context_page_description: Paul Richards is an emeritus professor of technology and agrarian development at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and adjunct professor at Njala University in central Sierra Leone. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University College London for many years, and previously taught anthropology and geography, at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London and the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
context_section_description: Fighting for the Rain Forest (1996) showed how the involvement of youth in Sierra Leonean rebel movements had little to do with widely perceived "barbarism" of rebel groups in resource-rich regions. War is, also, part of a "performance" with its origins in history, social orders, and human agency. Paul Richards witnessed some of the fighting during the war, continuing to visit the country. The widely held "New Barbarism" theories of Robert D. Kaplan and others had suggested abundant natural resources, like Sierra Leone's blood diamonds, were a magnet for human greed and civil conflict. Instead, Richards has argued that the involvement of youth in the Revolutionary United Front rebel movement was a form of social resistance to matriarchal rule in Sierra Leone, did not appear to have a strong underlying motive of greed (for the diamond revenues), and was a considered response rather than a spontaneous, 'barbaric' movement. Grievances were partly responsible for the violence that undoubtedly did afflict Sierra Leone during its civil war and for which the Revolutionary United Front was partly responsible. Richards has advised aid and humanitarian agencies on African post-war reconstruction, demobilization and skills-training.
caption: Paul Richards, lecturing in 2014
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