ASCL Seminar: Roadblock Politics - Predation and Resistance in Central Africa
This event will take be held both online and physically in Leiden. All registrees will receive a link to the online platform one day before the start of the event. Photo credits: Peer Schouten. Along the muddy roads and forested rivers snaking through Central Africa, rebels and soldiers, traditional authorities and civil servants, erect roadblocks where they deploy the threat of violence to impose their will on passersby. There are, in fact, so many roadblocks in Central Africa that it is hard to find a road that does not have one. Peer Schouten has mapped over a thousand of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic, and South Sudan. In his talk, Schouten will present the main findings of his book Roadblock Politics: the Origins of Violence in Central Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2022), which argues that roadblocks aren’t just a symptom of corruption or state failure but encapsulate a distinct and meaningful form of order-making. The failure to recognise the central role of roadblocks in this region is due to the stubborn myth that political actors, armed or not, behave like aspiring Westphalian states, trying to control as much territory and people as possible. Speaker: Dr Peer Schouten (Danish Institute for International Studies). Location: Matthias de Vrieshof 3, 2311 BZ Leiden. Click here to register for this event
