1990s
2000s
20th century
A01=Joseph Hellweg
academic
africa
african
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Author_Joseph Hellweg
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benkadi
bureaucracy
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJH
Category=HBLW3
Category=JBSL
Category=JHM
Category=JPW
Category=NHH
COP=United States
cops
cote divoire
cultural
culture
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ethics
historical
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hunter
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islamic
ivory coast
justice
Language_English
mimesis
movement
muslim
occult
occultism
PA=Available
police
political
politics
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
rebellion
research
sacrifice
scholarly
security
social studies
softlaunch
stalking
theft
thieves
Product details
- ISBN 9780226326542
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jul 2011
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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In the 1990s a nationwide crime wave overtook Cote d'Ivoire. The Ivoirian police failed to control the situation, so a group of poor, politically marginalized, and mostly Muslim men took on the role of the people's protectors as part of a movement they called Benkadi. These men were dozos - hunters skilled in ritual sacrifice - and they applied their hunting and occult expertise, along with the ethical principles implicit in both forms of knowledge, to the tracking and capturing of thieves. Meanwhile, as Benkadi emerged, so too did the ethnic, regional, and religious divisions that would culminate in Cote d'Ivoire's 2002-07 rebellion. "Hunting the Ethical State" reveals how dozos worked beyond these divisions to derive their new roles as enforcers of security from their ritual hunting ethos. Much as they used sorcery to shape-shift and outwit game, they now transformed into unofficial police, and their ritual networks became police bureaucracies. Though these Muslim and northern-descended men would later resist the state, Joseph Hellweg demonstrates how they briefly succeeded at making a place for themselves within it.
Ultimately, Hellweg interprets Benkadi as a flawed but ingenious and thoroughly modern attempt by non-state actors to reform an African state.
Joseph Hellweg is assistant professor of religion at Florida State University.
