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Background: Infectious disease outbreaks like Ebola and Covid-19 are increasing in frequency. They may harm reproductive, maternal and newborn health (RMNH) directly and indirectly. Sierra Leone experienced a sharp deterioration of RMNH during the 2014–16 Ebola epidemic. One possible explanation is that donor funding may have been diverted away from RMNH to the Ebola response. Methods: We analysed donor-reported data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s Creditor Reported System (CRS) data for Sierra Leone before, during and after the 2014–16 Ebola epidemic to understand whether aid flows for Ebola displaced aid for RMNH. We estimated aid for Ebola using key term searches and manual review of CRS records. We estimated aid for RMNH by applying the Muskoka-2 algorithm to the CRS and analysing CRS purpose codes. Results: We find substantial increases in aid to Sierra Leone (from $484 million in 2013 to $1 billion at the height of the epidemic in 2015), most of which was earmarked for the Ebola response. Overall, Ebola aid was additional to RMNH funding. RMNH aid was sustained during the epidemic (at $42 m per year) and peaked immediately after (at $77 m in 2016). There is some evidence of a small displacement of RMNH aid from the UK during the period when its Ebola funding increased. Conclusions: Modest changes to RMNH donor aid patterns are insufficient to explain the severe decline in RMNH indicators recorded during the outbreak. Our findings therefore suggest the need for substantial increases in routine aid to ensure that basic RMNH services and infrastructure are strong before an epidemic occurs, as well as increased aid for RMNH during epidemics like Ebola and Covid-19, if reproductive, maternal and newborn healthcare is to be maintained at pre-epidemic levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ebola Virus Disease struck Sierra Leone in May 2014. An international response was instrumental in ending the epidemic by December 2015 and has been extensively documented. Less attention has been paid to local responses. Here, we focus on a case in which there was no infection despite high infection in neighbouring areas. This brings into focus the role of customary public authority in implementing successful controls. We pay particular attention to the activities of a chiefdom Ebola Task force committee chaired by the Paramount Chief. Meetings were characterised by protocol and ceremony, but 'face time' served to reinforce, in ritual terms, important messages about quarantine and social distancing. The committee's pronouncements had illocutionary force. Local volunteers translated this ceremonial message into practical action to block imported cases. The analysis of ceremonial competence, we conclude, opens a window into how public authority addresses developmental shocks in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural‐based insurgencies disrupted the forest margins of Upper West Africa in the 1990s. A subsequent return to peace was accompanied by strong growth in small‐scale trade in foodstuffs and other agrarian produce in high demand in towns. Motor cycle taxis are a feature of this increased rural–urban market integration. It was a mode of transport pioneered by ex‐combatants. Where rural women were once attacked by rural young men without job prospects press ganged into fighting for the rebels, bike taxi riders now carry them to rural periodic markets, many of which are new since the end of conflict. The study provides an analytical account of these developments, drawing on discussions with villagers in three heavily war‐affected localities of Sierra Leone. The evidence indicates that communities divided by conflict have quietly built new cooperative links conducive to peace based on local agricultural production and petty trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The 2013–15 Ebola epidemic in West Africa was the largest so far recorded, and mainly affected three adjacent countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The worst affected country (in terms of confirmed cases) was Sierra Leone. The present paper looks at the epidemic in Sierra Leone. The epidemic in this country was a concatenation of local outbreaks. These local outbreaks are not well characterized through analysis using standard numerical techniques. In part, this reflects difficulties in record collection at the height of the epidemic. This paper offers a different approach, based on application of field-based techniques of social investigation that provide a richer understanding of the epidemic. Methods: In a post-epidemic study (2016–18) of two districts (Bo and Moyamba) we use ethnographic data to reconstruct local infection pathways from evidence provided by affected communities, cross-referenced to records of the epidemic retained by the National Ebola Response Commission, now lodged in the Ebola Museum and Archive at Njala University. Our study documents and discusses local social and contextual factors largely missing from previously published studies. Results: Our major finding is that the epidemic in Sierra Leone was a series of local outbreaks, some of which were better contained than others. In those that were not well contained, a number of contingent factors helps explain loss of control. Several numerical studies have drawn attention to the importance of local heterogeneities in the Sierra Leone Ebola epidemic. Our qualitative study throws specific light on a number of elements that explain these heterogeneities: the role of externalities, health system deficiencies, cultural considerations and local coping capacities. Conclusions: Social issues and local contingencies explain the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone and are key to understanding heterogeneities in epidemiological data. Integrating ethnographic research into epidemic-response is critical to properly understand the patterns of spread and the opportunities to intervene. This conclusion has significant implications for future interdisciplinary research and interpretation of standard numerical data, and consequently for control of epidemic outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Concern has been expressed over how well Africa is prepared to cope with the pandemic of Covid-19. Will rural populations with low levels of education know how to apply community-based infection control? We undertook fieldwork in two villages in central Sierra Leone to gain insight into how rural people faced with Covid-19 assess epidemic infection risks. Methods: Two communities were selected based on prior contrasted exposure to Ebola Virus Disease–one with substantial number of cases and the other having resisted infection through strong community sequestration measures. We assessed understanding of infection risks via an experimental game. This asked players to express a preference for one of two diseases, one resembling Ebola with lower risk of infection and the other resembling Covid-19 with lower risk of death. Players were not told the identity of the diseases. Results: In total 107 adult villagers played the game (58% women). Half (52%) preferred the disease model with lower risk of infection, 29% preferred the model with lower risk of death, while 21% saw the combined risk of infection and death as being equivalent. Differences in reactions between the two locations were small despite different experiences of Ebola. Asked to explain their choices 48% of players cited information on infection risks modelled by the game and 31% stated that their choices reflected awareness of the need for personal action and respect for local regulations. We concluded that villagers thoughtfully assess disease risks and that some are good intuitive statisticians. Conclusions: Results suggest rural people in Sierra Leone retain the lessons of experience from the Ebola outbreak of 2014–15 and will be able to apply these lessons to a new infectious disease for which have no prior practical experience. Our expectation is that rural populations will understand Covid-19 control measures, thus reducing need for draconian enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, people were required by law to call a trained "safe burial" team to dispose of the body of a person who had died from Ebola. It took days for a team to arrive, however, due to limited resources and rural travel obstacles, so some villagers felt obliged to bury their loved ones themselves. Even with timely arrival of a team, there can be cultural priorities that deserve attention. One man's case discussed in this article suggests the need for Ebola responders to consider villagers' perspectives and possibilities for compromise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers local responses to the introduction of an Ebola Treatment Centre in eastern Sierra Leone during the West African epidemic of 2014–15. Our study used qualitative methods consisting of focus groups and interviews, to gather responses from patients, members of the families of survivors and deceased victims of the disease, social liaison workers from the centre, and members of the general public. The data indicate that scepticism and resistance were widespread at the outset, but that misconceptions were replaced, in the minds of those directly affected by the disease, by more positive later assessments. Social workers, and social contacts of families with workers in the centre, helped reshape these perceptions, but a major factor was direct experience of the disease. This is apparent in the positive endorsements by survivors and families who had members taken to the facility. Even relatives of deceased victims agreed that the case-handling centre was valuable. However, we also present evidence of continuing scepticism in the minds of members of the general public, who continue to suspect that Ebola was a crisis manufactured for external benefit. Our conclusions stress the importance of better connectivity between communities and Ebola facilities to facilitate experiential learning. There is also a need to address the wider cognitive shock caused by a well-funded Ebola health initiative arriving in communities with a long history of inadequate health care. Restoring trust in medicine requires Ebola Virus Disease to be re-contextualized within a broader framework of concern for the health of all citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in Upper West Africa is the largest ever recorded. Molecular evidence suggests spread has been almost exclusively through human-to-human contact. Social factors are thus clearly important to understand the epidemic and ways in which it might be stopped, but these factors have so far been little analyzed. The present paper focuses on Sierra Leone, and provides cross sectional data on the least understood part of the epidemic—the largely undocumented spread of Ebola in rural areas. Various forms of social networking in rural communities and their relevance for understanding pathways of transmission are described. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between marriage, funerals and land tenure. Funerals are known to be a high-risk factor for infection. It is suggested that more than a shift in awareness of risks will be needed to change local patterns of behavior, especially in regard to funerals, since these are central to the consolidation of community ties. A concluding discussion relates the information presented to plans for halting the disease. Local consultation and access are seen as major challenges to be addressed. Author Summary: Ebola virus disease is a disease of social intimacy. The main infection pathways are through nursing of the sick and through preparation of corpses for burial. In African rural communities these are activities mainly undertaken by close family members. Infection thus spreads to those most intimate with the patient. In effect, Ebola virus disease exacts a high price for family loyalty. It also causes a potential breach between family members and the authorities responsible for imposing infection control. Understanding the social pathways through which infection spreads, and the conflict of human values invoked by infection control are thus key topics in managing the current Ebola epidemic in Upper West Africa. The paper offers a picture, based on case study data from central Sierra Leone, of some of the social factors to be taken into account in efforts to control the epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Witchcraft has been documented across the globe. The widespread occurrence of such beliefs in modern Africa affects politics, economic development, and poverty alleviation. Anthropologists have analysed the semiotics of African witchcraft, but there is less information on distributional issues. An important question is which communities are most affected, and why? Using data from a survey of 182 villages and 2,443 household heads in the Gola Forest region of eastern Sierra Leone, we examine three manifestations of witchcraft – concerns, conflicts, and detection. We find that where patrimonial relations of agrarian production remain strong, and in settings where market forces are now well established, witchcraft is less of a concern. By contrast, witchcraft manifestations are higher in communities experiencing the competing pull of patrimonial and market norms. Witchcraft, we conclude, is a product of normative ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the extent to which customary governance in Sierra Leone can be held responsible for an increasingly unstable two-class agrarian society. A case is made for regarding the civil war (1991-2002) as being an eruption of long-term, entrenched agrarian tensions exacerbated by chiefly rule. Evidence is presented to suggest that the main rebel movement embodied in its plans to reorganize agricultural production some grasp of these longer-term agrarian problems. Postwar attempts to implement co-operative farming and mining are then described. The failure of these schemes is linked to the reinstitution of customary land law and local patronage systems. Current struggles over land now involve international capital. Deep agrarian reforms will be required as the price of keeping international capital engaged in the Sierra Leone countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Was the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) fought for diamonds, or was it a peasant insurgency motivated by agrarian grievances? The evidence on both sides is less than conclusive. This article scrutinizes the peasant insurgency argument via a more rigorous methodology. Hypotheses concerning intra-peasant tensions over marriage and farm labour are derived from an examination of the anthropological literature. These are tested using econometric tools, applied to data from a randomized survey of 2,239 households in 178 villages surrounding the Gola Forest in eastern and southern Sierra Leone, the cradle of the war. It is shown that a decade after the war ended peasant disputes over marriage continue to mark out an incipient class divide in isolated rural communities, as evidenced by cases presented in local courts and family moots. Disputes mainly involve a village elder suing a young man with weak social protection. Fines are exceptionally high, and mostly paid off in the form of coerced farm labour. It is argued that grievance over this long-standing form of labour exploitation fed insurgency, and contributed to the otherwise puzzlingly high levels of peasant-upon-peasant violence associated with the war in Sierra Leone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary: Many accounts of cultural factors in armed conflicts are dependent on circumstantial details. Alternative quantitative approaches suffer from confusion of correlation and cause. This paper describes and exemplifies a third approach to the analysis of cultural factors in war—causal process tracing. Six key steps in implementing causal process tracing are outlined and applied to recent episodes of armed conflict in Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone. The virtue of the method lies in establishing a systematic framework for the comparison and evaluation of cultural mechanisms, thus providing an escape from hazards associated with subjective regression. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Those who intervene in crises must take care to ensure that assistance does not undermine the processes through which social cohesion is generated or restored. From a neo-Durkheimian analytical perspective, feeding creates social loyalties as well as saves lives. Humanitarian agencies provide practical assistance to livelihoods, but they need also to create space for the ritual agency on which social cohesion depends. Attention to the rituals of food distribution helps humanitarian actors to address a potentially damaging dissociation between social and material facts. A post-war food security project in Sierra Leone is used to illustrate the point. The lessons of this intervention have implications for the organisation of humanitarian assistance at all levels, both international and local. The paper argues that establishing space for ritualisation within humanitarian programmes is an obligation for those who wish to do no harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnicity—once the preserve of anthropologists and folklorists studying disappearing tribal and peasant cultures—has become an important element in the models and explanations of a broader community of social scientists seeking to comprehend post–Cold War social disorder. But is ethnicity equivalent to variables such as resource competition or poverty? Ethnicity can be viewed as an epiphenomenon. The argument has major consequences for the way ethnic conflicts are analyzed and resolved. The article considers neo-Durkheimian conceptual tools for uncovering mechanisms generative of ethnic epiphenomena, and explores a neo-Durkheimian approach to conflict resolution. Specifically, Mary Douglas's ideas on ring composition are extended to include the ethnomusicological project of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, and then applied to epiphenomena emerging from the protracted civil conflict in the West African country of Sierra Leone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology is often defined in terms of tools or machines but, in this article, it is treated as the human capacity to make. The author focuses on clothing as an instance of making in war. Specific attention is paid to the junction between the power to make (or unmake) and the social and ritual capacities for regulation through which making is governed. In this sense, the study is intended as a contribution to a revived interest in the incomplete Durkheimian project on elementary forms of technique, and techniques of the body in particular. The case-study material derives from the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002) in which dress was as important an aspect of making war as weaponry. Various functions and social and material entailments of battle dress are described and differentiated, and the central role of magic for understanding clothing (and technology more generally) is underlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines agrarian issues in civil wars in Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Attention is paid to two different ways in which lineage society evolved during the colonial and post-colonial periods. The motivations of fighters are related to these different trajectories of agrarian social change. In Côte d’Ivoire youth militia fought to uphold a lineage-based social order, but in Sierra Leone a comparable group of young fighters sought to overturn it. Large migrant populations on a forest frontier are an important factor in Côte d’Ivoire, while in Sierra Leone significance attaches to an excluded agrarian underclass. Not all African conflicts are ethnic conflicts; autochthony is shown to be a factor in one conflict and class in the other. Approaches to post-war reconstruction based on undifferentiated notions of community should be resisted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Participation is considered an important tool of development. Two mechanisms of participation are distinguished - deliberative and performative. Deliberative participation is vulnerable to capture by elites. A postwar agricultural reconstruction project in Sierra Leone experimented with a performative approach to participation. Technological dynamics served to focus attention on alternatives to patrimonial value systems. The article advocates further experiments in linking deliberative and performative participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Idealists consider beliefs cause wars. Realists consider wars cause beliefs. The war in Sierra Leone offers some scope to test between these two views. The main rebel faction, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was, sociologically speaking, an accidental sect. It lost its original ideologues at an early stage, and absorbed others with a different orientation as a result of military misfortunes. Bombing reinforced the sectarian tendencies of an enclaved movement, and belief proliferated. This confounded military assessments that the movement could be rapidly brought to heel by a private military intervention sponsored by British and South African mineral interests. The movement became an uncontrollable juggernaut, driven by strange sacrificial notions directed against rural populations it had once set out to liberate. The war in Sierra Leone is consistent with the Durkheimian argument that performance forges collective representations. Dealing with armed insurgency in Africa requires appreciation of the artefactual and circumstantial character of social and religious beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone have been linked to the condition of urbanized youth. Recent research in southeastern Sierra Leone and north-western Liberia suggests the rural context is of greater significance. The fighting was mainly in rural areas, involved mainly rural youth, and adapted itself to their local concerns. A model of war as the work of urban criminal gangs, reflecting local student politics in the 1970s and embraced internationally, is ripe for replacement by a model of war as agrarian revolt. This would open up the possibility of a more coherent regional analysis of recent West African conflicts. The key to conflict resolution in the region, it is suggested, is an emphasis on agrarian justice, including reform of customary land and marriage law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postwar countries in Africa are among the poorest. In the countries of the Mano River region (Liberia, Sierra Leone) agrarian injustice emerges as a major cause of both poverty and conflict. Serious efforts are needed to improve the labour, land and property rights of rural women and young people if the long-term causes of these conflicts are to be mitigated and agricultural development opportunities enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increased upstream withdrawal of Ganga waters for irrigation and urban industrial uses, Ganga's dry season flow is declining. The heavily populated but marginalised north Indian State of Bihar with itscapital at Patna expects the Union government in Delhi to curb the appetite of upstream States; but Delhi's water bureaucracy, having grown within a culture of 'construction' rather than 'water management',is reluctant to do so. Adding to Patna's anxiety is a new fear in the form of the 1996 Farakka Treaty between India and Bangladesh, an international obligation that Patna fears will further curtail its water rights. Delhi, however, is able to placate Patna with promises of aKosi High Dam in Nepal on the major tributary of the Ganga closest to Bihar. Because both bureaucracies belong to a social solidarity of hierarchic procedures that would make similar technological choices, Patna is pacified. On the other hand, activist groups in Bihar belonging to a different solidarity, that of egalitarian equity, point to the dismal consequences of past technological choices (embankments) onthe land and its poor and continue to oppose this new choice as well. The hierarchic discourse between Patna and Delhi, however, filters out this activist critique and pursues a business-as-usual program ofnew high dam construction. The purpose of this paper is to examine the institutional background behind such rigid, single-mission policies and the costly surprises and impasse they are prone to. The paper argues that sagaciously providing space for constructive engagement among differing perspectives of the state, market and civil society on Bihar's water problems may minimize this risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In rural Liberia and Sierra Leone about half of motorcycle taxi passengers are female, with this proportion increasing on market days. However, all motorcycle taxi operators in rural areas are male. This study assessed if and how motorcycle taxis have contributed to the livelihoods of rural women and whether there is appetite among them to become operators themselves. Data were gathered through male and female focus group discussions, roadside traffic counts and operator and passenger surveys. The study was conducted in three districts in rural Sierra Leone and one rural county in Liberia. The Liberia field site was the location of a pioneering pilot project on upgrading footpaths to motorcycle-accessible tracks. This project, funded by a German development agency, aimed to connect remote villages to the feeder road network. Both men and women were involved in track construction and this study assessed whether the women's involvement made them more likely to take up commercial motorcycle riding. Women nearly universally praised rural motorcycle taxis, indicating that they have made access to markets and (maternal) health much easier. However, while many expressed the desire to become operators themselves, they identified a number of barriers, the most significant being lack of friends or business persons willing to rent motorcycles to female operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an expanding literature on Ebola-response, few studies detail or reflect on the responses of diverse systems of care. Little is known about how, why or in what ways, strategies of ill-health management were enacted locally, how health-systems power, authority and hierarchy were perceived and contested, or how other social systems, institutions and relationships shaped the response. This paper presents an interdisciplinary analysis of local responses in two early affected districts in Sierra Leone. Drawing on anthropological theories of social ordering and assemblage, we present an analysis of contrasting infection chains in three extended case studies from Bo and Moyamba districts. In contrast to previous scholarship which has understood local actions as being reactive (supporting or obstructing) to a national Ebola response, we show that local arrangements lead and shape responses. Our cases show how multiple, entangled, dynamic and co-existing systems of care influence these responses. Some individuals and communities collaborated with health authorities on measures like reporting and quarantine, others actively opposed them, or played an intermediary role. Collectively, formal health systems actors, local authorities and ordinary citizens negotiated and enacted new arrangements. These arrangements involved compromise and sometimes power was reconfigured. They were also shaped by wider political and historical contexts and by availability or absence of formal healthcare resources. Our research shows the critical importance of understanding how institutions and people involved in healthcare enact diverse "systems of care" and thereby shape Ebola response. Most importantly, our work underlines the need for alignment between formal health-systems and wider social, cultural, political and economic forms of organisation at family and community levels to improve crisis-response and promote sustainable care. In particular, health systems responders need to identify and engage with key brokers – or arrangers – in frontline care systems, with whom mutually acceptable, and effective, reconfigurations of care can be achieved. • Multiple, dynamic, co-existing systems of care shaped Sierra Leone's Ebola response. • Political/historic context, resources, conflict and compromise all shaped care systems. • Diverse local actors negotiated relationships to reconfigure healthcare arrangements. • It is local arrangements that lead and shape crisis-response at the decentralised level. • Health systems need to engage with "arrangers" to reconfigure locally responsive care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, people were required by law to call a trained "safe burial" team to dispose of the body of a person who had died from Ebola. It took days for a team to arrive, however, due to limited resources and rural travel obstacles, so some villagers felt obliged to bury their loved ones themselves. Even with timely arrival of a team, there can be cultural priorities that deserve attention. One man's case discussed in this article suggests the need for Ebola responders to consider villagers' perspectives and possibilities for compromise., (© 2020 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved.)

Based on preliminary findings of ongoing 'action research' in the war zone in central Sierra Leone, this paper shows how more equitable seed distribution could contribute to fostering a culture of human rights as well as to agricultural rehabilitation. Assessment of seeds-and-toosl programmes in 19 villages found that aid agency targeting and distribution modalities channelled inputs through village committees which denied assistance to intended beneficiary groups. Such distribution inequalities constitute violations of fundamental human rights, exacerbate grievance and division and maintain the threat of social disorder. The benefits and disadvantages of an alternative, more inclusive, rights-based approach to seed distribution are discussed, and preliminary results from the pilot phase of CARE's Rights-based Approach to Food Security Project are presented. Under this project, village-level peace and rights days are held to allow villagers to debate the vulnerabilities that facilitated the war and to elaborate on local notions of human rights. In symbolising new beginnings, seed can be seen as a useful medium through which to debate a more inclusive--and ultimately less vulnerable--society.