Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- Guns and the International Community -- How Gun Control Comes to the Gambia -- Gun Control from "None but Gentlemen" to "A Culture of Responsible Gun Ownership" -- Police, Guards, and Hunters: The Distribution of Legitimate Violence in The Gambia -- The Sutural State and Individual Freedom: The Symbolism of Gun Control -- Conclusion: Sovereignty, Gun Control, and Global Practice.

This book, based on field research in the West African country of The Gambia, explores how domestic gun control is shaped by international efforts and how local actors interact with international organizations or opt not to do so. The book also shows how the question of who can have what kind of gun under what circumstances is an intrinsic question to modern societies across the world, but it is seldom one that is addressed in sub-Saharan Africa except in cases of post-conflict countries. Small arms control and gun control are often treated as separate efforts, with the former the domain of international actors such as the United Nations and the latter being of concern to the domestic politics of countries such as the United States. By focusing on a country that has never seen the outbreak of a civil war, the book is able to disentangle the complex roots of gun control in Africa, its origins in colonial era legislation, its reverberations across social life, and how it shapes contemporary understandings of groups ranging for security guards to hunters. Niklas Hultin is Assistant Professor in the Global Affairs Program at George Mason University, USA.

This article examines the voter registration card and the social context of voter
registrations in the Gambia, West Africa. Drawing on recent ethnographies of
documents and using data on worries over foreigners' efforts to fraudulently
obtain voter registration cards, a public information campaign on the Gambian
electoral process, international legal material on the Gambian democracy, and
observations at voter registration stations, the article argues that the voter
registration card delineates not only a national subject but also a generic
political subject. This subject is characterized by a commitment to a
bureaucratic process and an appreciation of the card as an official identification
document inseparable from the person it identifies. The article also considers
how the voter registration process allows Gambians to compare their
experiences to citizens of other countries. In a political context of an
authoritarian government and a weak rule of law, this comparison offers an
ideal of a modern democratic state that both enables criticism of the Gambia's
present situation and confirms the centrality of a generic political subject to the
realization of that ideal.