Louisa Lombard, “Hunting Game Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic,” (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Northeastern Central African Republic - a vast space bordering Chad, Darfur, and South Sudan - is a quintessential ‘stateless’ space, where the government has little presence and armed actors operate freely. In this first ethnographic and historical study of Central African raiding, Louisa Lombard investigates practices of forceful acquisition, a distinctive political repertoire in which claims to social status are linked to the ability to take (from wild spaces, or from others) and are frequently overturned. People have developed raiding skills to survive and live in a stateless borderland for over 150 years. From the trans-Saharan slave trade, to colonial forced labour regimes, big game hunting and coercive conservation, to rebellion, raiding has flourished where people’s status in relation to each other is unclear and where institutional guidance is absent. Hunting Game offers rich comparative insights into the vibrant, if not always salutary, role that forceful acquisition plays in the world today.

 

The first ethnographic and historical study of raiding in the Central African Republic (CAR)

 

Examines the skills, encounters, and consequences associated with raiding as a political mode in its own right

 

Shows readers how harmful popular theories and buzzwords such as ‘failed state’ are