The Sanguinary Divide: Local Dynamics and the Divergent Legacies of Political Violence
My book project investigates the conditions under which political violence generates mobilizing or demobilizing legacies. Previous scholarship has delineated strong links between exposure to violence and changes in political attitudes, preferences, and behavior. The effects are bidirectional, however. At times, victims engage in political action at higher rates than their non-victimized analogues. This holds for individualized, low-cost political engagement like voting, as well as for higher cost forms of engagement and collective action (e.g., taking on a leadership role in the community or attending protests). At other times, exposure to political violence discourages engagement. Individuals withdraw from political life, as voter turnout drops across members of victimized groups and involvement in collective action efforts diminishes.
Reexamining the effects of violence through a local lens, I resolve this contradiction. The character with which regional, national, or otherwise supralocal conflict materializes in a given locality varies. One crucial dimension in which this variation occurs is the degree to which violence is of an intergroup nature - enacted between a community and identifiable outsiders - or intracommunal, enacted between members of the same community. Overarching conflict reified through intergroup violence mobilizes, while intracommunal violence demobilizes.
I test these claims through a study of post-conflict political practices in southern Cameroon. To demonstrate non-stochastic variation associated with exposure to different forms of violence, I collect interviews, conduct a subnational survey, and leverage material from French and Cameroonian archives.
Long Shadow of the ‘Maquis’: Discursive Practices Surrounding Cameroon’s Hidden War
Through interviews conducted in Cameroon in 2022 and 2023, I explore narratives of past conflict. I focus on discursive practices that [re]produce social and political meaning from death. Such narratives, which I refer to as necro-narratives, vary across and within communities affected by violence. I note consistencies across narrative elements, such as specific events and tactics of war. By contrast, however, the emplotment of events and the role of narratives in politicizing younger generations differ substantially. For some, narratives are a means by which younger generations are introduced to the unmet expectations of historic struggles in hopes that they will engage in politics. For some, the human costs of earlier movements is conveyed as a reason to focus energies on more immediate, material concerns.
Under review.
Echoes of the ‘Hidden War:’ Collective Memories of UPC Violence
How durable are the effects of political violence on group identity construction processes and political attitudes? Is the influence of past conflict on identities and political attitudes similar in direction and intensity across generations? We turn to evidence from Cameroon to inform our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of political violence. Cameroon experienced a period of political violence during the late-1950s and 1960s, first under the French colonial administration and subsequently under the Ahidjo regime. Also known as the Hidden War, violence was directed at upécistes, members of the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) political party. Leveraging cross-sectional data, we find evidence of a link between experiences during conflict and perceptions of group consciousness: individuals who lost a sibling during the Hidden War exhibit a higher sense of group consciousness relative to those whose families suffered no casualties. Those who lost a parent or grand-parent similarly exhibit an augmented sense of group consciousness, but the effect weakens. These results indicate that the influence of violence on attitudes across generations is substantial but diminishing.
With Natalie Wenzell Letsa. Under review.
Violence that Binds, Violence that Divides: How the Local Reification of National Conflict Conditions Postwar Political Engagement
In this paper, I study the association between exposure to violence and political practices by researching the character of that violence at the local level, namely the village in rural environments or neighborhood in urban milieus. I theorize that when violence takes on an intergroup character, such as when local militants oppose armed forces from outside the region, then victimization is an experience shared by one’s ingroup, subsequently consolidating collective memory, generating grievances, and strengthening social networks. When violence materializes with an intracommunal nature, conflict concretizes, deepens, and bloodies local sociopolitical cleavages. In these instances, there is no shared sense of victimization. Rather, victimization is an isolating experience whose outward expression in the postwar period risks the revitalization of intracommunal rifts. In short, intergroup violence provides a basis for mobilization while intracommunal violence discourages political engagement. Reflecting the nested structure of violence and conflict, I employ a hierarchical linear model with an original dataset generated by survey research that I completed in Cameroon (spring 2024). My theoretical expectations are met along several expressions of political engagement, with intergroup violence exposure exhibiting a link with increased voter participation and community political activity. These same practices decrease with exposure to intracommunal violence.
Working paper.
Civilian Casualty Attribution and Support for Anglophone Autonomy: A Survey Experiment in Southern Cameroon
In this working paper, I ask the question: How does the attribution of civilian causalities influence support for different channels of conflict resolution? Through a randomized survey experiment, I prime respondents with three versions of a vignette that conveys a brief report of civilian casualties resulting from a skirmish between separatist militants and state forces. The control vignette does not mention the responsible party, while treatments one and two vary attribution between militants and state forces. Respondents then rank policy preferences concerning conflict resolution. This experiment is embedded in an original survey conducted throughout southern Cameroon, where the bordering anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest are embroiled in a separatist conflict. Human rights violations have been prevalent throughout the war, with civilian casualties caused by both separatists and state forces.
Working paper.