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  • The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War
  • Mats Utas
Stephen Ellis. The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War. 2nd edition. New York: New York University Press, 2007. xxxiii + 350 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Annexes. Bibliography. Index. $24.00. Paper.

If Paul Richards’s Fighting for the Rainforest(James Currey, 1996) guided me in my 1998 doctoral fieldwork focusing on militant youth in Liberia, it was certainly Stephen Ellis’s encompassing 1999 study of the first Liberian Civil War [End Page 155](1990–96) that put the historical details of my dissertation right. Re-reading his book close to ten years later, in its new edition, I can only marvel at his meticulous handling of sources and the richness of information on the evolution of a centralized patronage system that redrew the political map of Liberia and changed capacities of local chiefs in the hinterland—processes that paved the way for both popular uprisings and political manipulations which shaped the Civil War. The following war history and its many paradoxes are described with a rare clarity, and the book shows how intertwined economy and politics in prewar Liberia became even more volatile and entangled during the war with the political-economy of emerging warlords.

Ellis gets almost everything right, but then oddly he chooses to add one detail as a kind of general framework to the study: the economy of the occult/the invisible world of the spirits. Ellis seems content to rather haphazardly encompass notions of witchcraft, magic, cannibalism, and a whole complex of other cosmological issues under the term “religion.” Consequently he associates “the spiritual history of Liberia” with the upcoming civil war (especially in chapter 6, but fragments of this strain of thought are traceable throughout the book), and suggests a general “spiritual confusion” in Liberia (xxxii). In Liberia: The Violence of Democracy(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), Mary Moran points toward an anthropological obsession with secret hierarchies and notes the unfortunate outcome it has had on work by political scientists and others using these sources. (She mentions Ellis in particular.) Similarly, in a critique of the first edition of The Mask of Anarchy( Journal of African History42, 1 [2001]: 167–69), Paul Richards has pointed toward some direct misrepresentations in the book, chiefly the connection made between “Leopard societies” and the Poro.

Nowhere does Ellis systematically define Liberian “religion,” and although he acknowledges structural changes within Liberian “religiosity,” he still publishes figures claiming that 75 percent of Liberians believe in traditional religions (227). By contrast, all Liberians I have ever met are either Christian or Muslim (although I am not suggesting that in a syncretistic vein they would not include other elements of beliefs). He also discusses the secret society Poro as if it has remained static since the time of the doctor/missionary Harley (in Liberia 1926–60), whereas the socializing capacity and control of Poro is far from the same today. (For example, Poro initiation is today typically completed within a few weeks; earlier initiations lasted a full year.) In parts of Liberia Poro remains powerful, yet this influence derives only to a limited extent from a spiritual viewpoint; it is more powerful as a political organizing force. It is a pity that Ellis does not discuss this further, as it would fit better into his main themes: politics and economy. Not only does Ellis end up with analytical problems by relying on older “colonial” anthropology, but he also gives too much uncritical credit to local newspaper reports on magic, cannibalism, and connected violence. In doing so, he fails to acknowledge that newspapers are part of the public domain and that reports here are tactically pitched or purposely staged. [End Page 156]News media are simply not where one can unravel “the economy of the hidden” that he is interested in.

With the exception of a new foreword, the main text of the second edition of The Mask of Anarchyremains unchanged from the original version. Ellis acknowledges the need for writing about the second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003) but concludes that...

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