Navigating Terrains of War ― Youth And Soldiering in Guinea-bissau

This work examines the lives of urban young men recruited into one of the militias fighting in the civil war in the West African country of Guinea- Bissau in the late 1990s. Putting his ethnographic focus on the Aguentas militia, Vigh (a researcher at the Rehabilitation and Research Center for Torture Victims, Denmark) investigates how the young men have engaged the political and military conflicts of the civil war as a process of social navigation in order to optimize their chances of physical survival and social improvement. Over the course of four thematic sections, he explores the social aspects of the militia's origins, the limitations and circumstances characterizing social positions and possibilities outside and inside the context of warfare, the young men's own understandings of understandings of social possibilities and limitations, and the social integration of Aguentas in the post-war period. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Henrik E. Vigh is a researcher at the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims in Copenhagen. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen and has worked on issues of youth and conflict in both Europe and West Africa. He is currently researching undocumented West African migrants in Europe and the networks that they depend on, develop and are caught up in.