The talk attempts to understand the relations between iconoclasm (the attempt to destroy objectionable objects,) and ethnogenesis (the coming into being of qualitatively new ethnic identities).

Tuesday, November 13, 2012
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
10367 Bunche Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Mike McGovern is a political anthropologist who works in West Africa and uses a variety of sources from kinship idioms to the aesthetics of state-sponsored folklore to try to understand postcolonial states within the arc of longer historical trajectories. His book Making War in Côte d'Ivoire focuses on the dramaturgy, sociology, and political economy of the Ivorian civil conflict.  A second book, Unmasking the State, will appear in November. He is currently working on a book project entitled A Socialist Peace? Explaining the Absence of War in an Out-of-the-Way Place. It argues that certain elements of Guinea's socialist past may have helped to inoculate the country against dynamics that have favored the outbreak of civil conflict elsewhere.  Recent book chapters and articles have focused on the aspirational facet of kinship talk during times of war, the politics of popular music in Côte d'Ivoire; and the interplay of Islamist conversion, local politics, and US counterterrorism policy in West Africa.

Cost : Free and Open to the Public; Pay-by-Space and all day Parking ($11) Available in Lot 3

www.international.ucla.edu/africa

Sponsor(s): African Studies Center