Changing Environments, Occult Protests, and Social Memories in Sierra Leone

This paper explores the ways in which the inhabitants of two different regions of Sierra Leone interpret in terms of the occult some unexpected and mysterious events occurring at a large-scale mining company and at a hydroelectric power dam. It shows that extractive landscapes can be places of great political contest. It argues that through the usual weapons of the weak (e.g. sabotage, thefts, and rumours) and the idiom of the occult, people express dissatisfaction with a modernity which has always been promised but never achieved. In doing so, this paper considers occult narratives as forms of social memory, pointing to a history of violence, terror and uncertainties inscribed in the landscape, dwelling practices, and bodies. In other words, local discourses on the occult are not just ways to make sense of the uncertainties and anxieties of a globalized modernity but also highly politicized practices which embody past experiences.