Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front
本书研究塞拉利昂内战期间儿童兵的生活与经历，分析他们如何成为、经历并脱离儿童兵身份，强调暴力文化的作用及个体应对差异，对理解非洲儿童兵现象有重要参考价值。
This book deals with the topic of child soldiers, a phenomenon that has been known about for a long time and widely discussed in contexts all over the world, but has a particular significance for African studies. Myriam Denov focuses on the lives and realities of a group of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, both boys and girls, and traces what happened to these children both during and following the eleven-year civil war. The book provides a broad overview on child soldiering as a global phenomenon, an introduction to the civil war in Sierra Leone, and an account of the author's research approach. In addition it analyses the ‘becoming’,‘being’, and ‘unmaking’ of child soldiers. Thus, by using quotations from a rich data set, the author represents the voices of young men and women and introduces the reader to their everyday lives during and after the civil war. Denov argues that Sierra Leone was already a violent setting before the official outbreak of war, and that this culture of violence is key to understanding the making of these child soldiers, for whom violence simply became a daily routine. Nevertheless, they also responded individually to this culture of violence and were not simply passive recipients. Accordingly, the author also discusses the different pathways the former child soldiers have taken back to a civilian life.