Daniel Hoffman

This study of militia combatants from the recent wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia argues that the barracks, with its spatial, economic, and military organization of human bodies and labor, has become the nomos of West Africa's postmodernity. City neighborhoods, border villages, refugee camps, and other sites of aggregation throughout this region serve as barracks spaces that facilitate the efficient deployment of young men for labor in the region's diamond mines, rubber plantations, and battlefields.