Excellent review of Ordering Violence by Alex Thurston

Posted on by pstaniland

I somehow missed it, but in late April, Alex Thurston (of Cincinnati and Sahelblog) wrote a very thoughtful, careful review of Ordering Violence in e-IR. I thought it was excellent and am grateful for his engagement. Thurston got what I was trying to do, while also dissecting areas where the book falls short (primary sources, for instance – the project got so spread out and wildly sprawling that I ended up relying heavily on secondary accounts to try to even thinly cover the terrain). I am also always fascinated by how to think about political violence in sub-Saharan Africa; there are quite wildly divergent approaches to studying the region, some of which seem quite familiar, and others quite alien to my area of focus and worldview. Check it out.