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No. 16 (2011): Postwar Peacebuilding and State Building in International Relations
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Riding the wheels of change? Young bike riders and the “crisis of youth” in Sierra Leona

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  • Michael BÜRGE,
  • Krijn PETERS
Michael BÜRGE
profesor externo en el Departamento de Antropología Social y Cultural de la University of Zurich
Krijn PETERS
profesor en el Departamento de Estudios Políticos y Culturales en la Swansea University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15366/relacionesinternacionales2011.16.007
Published February 28, 2011

Keywords:

youth, bike-riders , Sierra Leone , demobilisation and reintegration , Social capital , disarm
How to Cite
BÜRGE, M., & PETERS, K. (2011). Riding the wheels of change? Young bike riders and the “crisis of youth” in Sierra Leona. Relaciones Internacionales, (16), 179–198. https://doi.org/10.15366/relacionesinternacionales2011.16.007

Copyright (c) 2011 Michael BÜRGE, Krijn PETERS

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

In this article we consider the armed conflict (1991-2002) in Sierra Leone as the violent product of a ‘crisis of youth’, generated by a collapsing patrimonial state and exploitative customary practices of traditional authorities in rural areas, affecting young people from weak lineages in particular. Post war, the rapid growth in the number of motorbike taxies – a sector dominated by ex-combatants straight after the war but now employing tens of thousands of ordinary youth – is presented as an example of a new and spontaneous activity, based more on the rule of contract and wartime egalitarian principles than on patrimonial ones. Could this be an answer to pre-war exploitatively organisational modalities and the subsequent crisis of youth, or is it already getting corrupted by it?

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