How a diamond theft is resolved in Sierra Leone

In this paper, Peter Albrecht explores how a case of diamond theft is resolved in a rural diamond rich area of eastern Sierra Leone. It makes a contribution to theoretical debates on hybrid political orders.

Drawing on cultural studies, the concept of hybridity has emerged in peace and conflict studies as an important critique of the fragile/failed state discourse, and the binaries whereby the modern state is often contrasted with traditional or non-state actors.

The concept is also challenged for reproducing the very binaries that it seeks to overcome and lacking analytical vigor. The paper addresses these critiques by exploring the diamond theft case in detail.

It suggests an analytical shift from interaction between state institutions (police) and non-state authorities (traditional leaders) to focusing on processes of hybridization through the enactment and performativity of authority. This is an analytical move from preconceived cultural and political entities to the subject and the simultaneous quality of how he or she assembles and projects authority. It is in the subject’s strategies and practices at the micro level that we clearly see how hybridization processes occur.