Originally formed to harbor freed slaves and Americans returning to Africa, Liberia once was a land of hope. That was shattered by a long Civil War that shook its very foundation. Today's Liberia is glimpsed in this second edition. Building on the first edition, this updated volume focuses on the personalities, from the founders of Liberia, to the soldiers who are responsible simultaneously for destruction and the hope of stability. Along with these people, various social and ethnic groups, political parties and labor movements, economic entities and natural resources are profiled in this updated work. A new chronology of Liberia is included, and a selected bibliography suggests further readings for the scholar.

This book challenges the dominant view that the first Liberian civil war was caused by ethno-cultural antagonisms between and among the country's various ethnic groups. Alternatively, the book argues that the war was the consequence of the multifaceted crises of underdevelopment - cultural, economic, political, and social - generated by the neo-colonial Liberian State.

This book proposes the creation of a family therapy model. The proposed model would stem from the particular circumstances of Black South African (or Azanian) families and would be context- and culture-specific. The author provides a documented account of the socio-economic and socio-political circumstances of the Azanian family. This account reveals the inextricable linkage between the Azanians family fragmentation, their condition of deprivation, and their perpetual experience of emotional upheaval. Next, the author argues that the same socio-economic and socio-political aspects which impinge upon the Azanian family are actually central to the family therapy theory and model, and, therefore, must not be ignored. The argument presented in this book demonstrates to readers how a community can be lead out of oppression and toward wholeness. This book will appeal to black and white academians and practitioners of therapy. From Fragmentation to Wholeness will be particularly appropriate for classes studying cultural diversity or the foundations for counseling and therapy. Contents: Foreword; Acknowledgments; List of Tables; List of Figures; The South African Scenario; The Genesis of Fragmentation; Fragmentation of Family; Family Therapy: A Critique of Two Major Schools.

Life After Guns explores how ex-combatants and other post-war youth negotiated a depleted and difficult social and cultural landscape in the years following Liberia’s fourteen-year bloody civil war. Unlike others who study child soldiers, Abby Hardgrove’s ethnography looks at both former combatants and also the youth who were not recruited to fight. She focuses on the structural constraints and household and family organizations that either helped or limited opportunities as these young men grew into adulthood. Whether young men fought or not, and whether they had cultural capital before the war or not, family relations mattered a great deal in how they fared after the war.

This book of genuine and authentic Liberian songs shall serve as a primary source material for the general, as well as serve as an instructional tool by music teachers of young Liberians enrolled in institutions of learning scattered across Liberia. An additional dream of this author is that music lovers in diverse communities such as Clay Ashland and Cebu City, Bomoja and Birmingham, and the depressed areas of West Point and metropolitan Washington, DC, can assemble their dancing partners on dance floors and boogie-woogie to the melodious sounds of the fifteen songs profiled in this book.

This book deals with the dimensions of ethnicity and ethnic interaction in Northeast Africa. It proposes a mechanism to establish a condition of peaceful co-existence among ethnic groups in the region. Contents: List of Tables and Diagrams; Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgements; Language and Ethnicity; Religion and Ethnicity; Territory and Ethnicity; Conflict History; Conflict Management Systems; Peace, Democracy, and Regulation of Conflict; References; Index.

This key text brings together a team of leading contributors to address the complex issues of security reconciliation and reconstruction in post conflict societies. Security, Reconstruction and Reconciliation is organized into four main sections: the social, political, and economic dimensions of conflict the impact of conflict on women and children reconstruction and past human rights violations disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, post-war reconstruction and the building of a capable state and the role of the international community in the peace process. The chapters offer a detailed and succinct exposition of the challenges facing post conflict societies by articulating the vision of a new society. With a foreword by Francis Deng, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on Internally Displaced Persons, the authors discuss the issues in the context of possible solutions and lessons learnt in the field. This new book is a valuable resource for researchers, policy makers and students in the fields of conflict resolution, security studies, law and development.

This book represents the first attempt to holistically document and analyze the causes of deadly conflict in Liberia from its founding to the present. It reconstructs and examines the root, operational, and catalytic causes of eighteen internal deadly conflicts that transpired in Liberia between 1822 and 2003, including the 1980 coup d'e'tat against the Tolbert regime and the Great War (1989-2003). The book seeks to answer two primary questions: What are the historical causes of deadly conflict in Liberia, and To what extent has the evolution of settler nationalism and authoritarianism contributed to the stimulation of conflict between settler and native Liberians? To answer these questions, Levitt examines a continuum of circular causation among the state of affairs that led to the founding of the Liberian State, the evolution of settler authoritarianism and nationalism, and internal conflict. By analyzing these processes together, the causes of eighteen conflicts are revealed and thoroughly discussed. The book also has three major objectives: to determine the historical causes of deadly conflict in Liberia, in particular, the underlining historical phenomena responsible for birthing the Great War; to present an alternative framework to comprehend and examine the aged conflict dynamic between settler and indigenous Liberians, and within Liberian society itself; and to produce the first comprehensive study of deadly conflict in Liberia. This book advantageously spans the fields of political science, history, international law, and peace and conflict studies; it is an excellent interdisciplinary choice. "Dr. Levitt has meticulously investigated the major violent conflicts in Liberia's tortured history and convincingly traced their roots to political institutions of domination and control that remain at the foundation of Liberia's system of governance today. The book's message for Liberia's future is unmistakable." -- Amos Sawyer, Professor and Associate Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University-Bloomington, and former Interim President of Liberia, IGNU "[T]he definitive work on the causes of Liberia's cycle of deadly conflict... The vital importance of Dr. Levitt's work is clear: only by understanding those root causes can Liberians and those who wish them well hope to find an exit from the cycle." -- David Wippman, Professor of Law and Vice Provost for International Relations, Cornell University "This is an excellent book... Levitt deserves great credit for its quality, thoroughness and the care of his research." -- Crawford Young, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison "[A]n original work with fresh perspective that is well grounded in history and theory and of great value to Liberian studies and to the theoretical literature on deadly conflict." -- D. Elwood Dunn, Professor & Chair of Political Science, University of the South (TN), Former Liberian Government Official "Levitt's painstaking documentation of the deadly conflicts makes a most useful contribution to the on-going governance debate. This work is a major contribution to understanding the primary factors that collapsed the Liberian state." -- Dr. Byron Tarr, Development Consultants Inc. Monrovia, Liberia "Levitt, for his part, makes a major contribution to our understanding both of Liberia's past and how that past ought to inform our understanding of the present. Indeed, his is the first systematic accounting for the many nation-building conflicts of Liberia." -- African Studies Review