In Sierra Leone

by Michael D. Jackson

In 2002, as Sierra Leone prepared to announce the end of its brutal civil war, the distinguished anthropologist, poet, and novelist Michael Jackson returned to the country where he had intermittently lived and worked as an ethnographer since 1969. While his initial concern was to help his old friend Sewa Bockarie (S. B.) Marah—a prominent figure in Sierra Leonean politics—write his autobiography, Jackson’s experiences during his stay led him to create a more complex In Sierra Leone, a beautifully rendered mosaic integrating S. B.’s moving stories with personal reflections, ethnographic digressions, and meditations on history and violence. Though the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F.) ostensibly fought its war (1991–2002) against corrupt government, the people of Sierra Leone were its victims. By the time the war was over, more than fifty thousand were dead, thousands more had been maimed, and over one million were displaced. Jackson relates the stories of political leaders and ordinary people trying to salvage their lives and livelihoods in the aftermath of cataclysmic violence. Combining these with his own knowledge of African folklore, history, and politics and with S. B.’s bittersweet memories—of his family’s rich heritage, his imprisonment as a political detainee, and his position in several of Sierra Leone’s post-independence governments—Jackson has created a work of elegiac, literary, and philosophical power.

Genres: Africa, Ethnography, Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Michael D. Jackson (born 1940) is a post-modern New Zealand anthropologist who has taught in the anthropology departments at the University of Copenhagen and Indiana University and is currently a professor of world religions at Harvard Divinity School. He holds a BA from Victoria University of Wellington, an MA from the University of Auckland and a PhD from Cambridge University.

Jackson is the founder of existential/phenomenological anthropology, a sub-field of anthropology using ethnographical fieldwork as well as existential theories of being in order to explore modes of being and interpersonal relationships as they exist in various cultural settings throughout the world. In this way he creates an interdisciplinary approach that attempts to understand the human condition by examining the various ways in which this condition manifests itself cross-culturally. In so doing, he concentrates on concrete, individual, lived situations and attempts to recreate and explain these situations as they are perceived and experienced by the other. For example, rather than looking at what mythology or ritual may mean for a group of people, he looks at what mythology or ritual means for an individual existing in the group. In this way he is able to examine "being-in-the-world", a concept fundamental to the field of existentialism. This approach also allows him to address the problem of intersubjectivity, which has as a goal the understanding of the other in terms of the other's individual lifeworld. In this way the other's relationship with the world around them is explained in a manner not previously seen, and is fundamental to the project of understanding intersubjective existence (or the relation between two individual subjects).

A large part of Jackson's methodology is also his account of personal experiences he acquired during his fieldwork. This method of reflexivity is indicative of the current postmodern trend in the field of anthropology, which seeks to contextualize the ethnographer as a subjective participant in the field. This methodology allows him to explain very accurately his relation with the world around him, referencing frequently existential theories in the process.

His influences include: Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Claude Levi-Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Pierre Bourdieu, William James, John Dewey, Edmund Husserl, Bronislaw Malinowski, Richard Rorty, Paul Ricoeur, Marcel Mauss.

He is in no way related to the famous singer, also named Michael Jackson.

Reviews

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author traveled to Sierra Leone in 1969 where he spent a number of years doing ethnographic studies. He found a country emerging from colonial rule, an unstable government riddled with corruption, a vibrant and multi-ethnic culture, hard-working, hope-filled, superstitious, highly stratified communities. A brutal war of rebellion in the 1990s left a scarred and wounded country, most of the people with crippling physical and psychological wounds, a society divided with its physical structures destroyed, often fatalistic, yet somehow still believing in a future and still hopeful. The author returned to Sierra Leone in 2002 to the friends he had left behind. In part, this is the oral history of one of those friends, a man whose political career spanned the second half of the 20th century, whose family story was wrapped up with the story of his country. Between the transcripts of this narrated autobiography is the author’s impressions of post-war Sierra Leone, his interpretation of the cultural dynamics and social beliefs that are shaping a people at a critical juncture in its history.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite being a "scholarly" anthropological book, Michael Jackson (I know but's it a different one) has created a narrative that reads so fluidly that you would never know. Jackson, who spent many years in Sierra Leone as a culture anthropologist, returns "home" upon the end of the civil war that ravaged the west African country. This is his depictions on how the event changed the societal and cultural landscape that he loves so dearly as well as focusing on the relationships of the citizens with each other. It's been about 5 years since I first read this book in college but it has remained one that has left a haunting impression on me. I highly recommend if you want a personal look of how a country rebuilds itself and its relationships with each other post civil war in today's society as well as gaining insight to African customs and beliefs.

[Babak Fakhamzadeh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of the book is excellent. Jackson used to live in Sierra Leone some 40 years ago and his account starts with a very personal evaluation of the state of Sierra Leone as it was shortly after the end of the civil war. Having returned to Salone to help an old friend and politician, S. B. Marah, write his memoirs, the book, instead of the memoirs he was to put to paper, is a mix of Jackson's personal experiences and the politician's history.
However, it's the latter which is the least interesting, presented as a straightforward recounting of, not very interesting, events. The former, where it becomes very clear that Sierra Leone's troubles are indeed quite similar to the European horrors of the second world war, are the most intriguing.

Additionally, Jackson tries to be too literary for my tastes, often referring to renowned writers with contemplations on destiny, loneliness, cruelty and whatnot. But that's probably related to Wikipedia calling this Michael Jackson a poet.
Before the book was published, in 2004, Marah quite suddenly passed away, in the same year as his brother, with whom Jackson worked in Sierra Leone in the 1970s. The book is dedicated to the two brothers.

[Ghm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read Jackson's articles before, I can say that his books are an altogether different and better experience. His books off space for his subtle layering of memories, impressions, and time (that his articles tend to flatten). For me, His anthropological writing style borders on brilliance. In just 2-3 paragraphs he is capable of setting a scene- geographically, historically, politically, peopling it with characters, and calling up a sensory reading experience. This is before he begins in earnest to lay out his fragment- each chapter makes a single point, situates a single memory, moment or person. In sum, the book manages to convey not so much the story of a person (it mainly follows S.B), but Sierra Leone as a scene in the early 2000's.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a few possible books here: Jackson's views on the place of the ethnographer who is always the outsider even after many years; the somewhat self-serving stories that S.B. Marah tells the to the anthropologist who, he hopes, will become his biographer (or apologist, or hagiographer); the tales of the survivors of civil war, and Jackson's personal recollections of his own experiences in Sierra Leone in more peaceful times.

I still, at the end of this book, feel that I don't really have enough historical or geographical context to understand why Jackson wrote the book that he did - instead of the book that he didn't.