This paper takes a detailed look at the relationship today between elders and youths in rural and peri-urban Sierra Leone, and on how that relationship might have changed during and after the country's civil war of the 1990s. It focuses largely, though not exclusively, on political institutions....

The topic of this paper is, in the words of one reviewer, 'one of the most discussed sociological and societal issues in African studies: the relationship between traditional institutions and new institutions'. Often in such discussions, the 'traditional' and 'modern' are framed as if in...