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From the Margins of the State to the Presidential Palace: The Balanta Case in Guinea-Bissau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

Marina Padrão Temudo
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Abstract:

Balanta farmers of Guinea-Bissau are often regarded by neighboring communities as “backward” and as a people who have refused modern life-worlds. Despite the fact that these farmers played a very important role in the making of Guinea-Bissau, they were progressively removed from power after independence. However, they also developed original forms of contesting marginality. This article portrays the Balanta as complex historical subjects with strategic agendas. It examines the tensions between centrality and marginality in today's Guinea-Bissau and in the Balanta's own ways of imagining their place in the nation.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , September 2009 , pp. 47 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2009

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