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Marriage, Zoe (2008) 'Review article of recent literature on the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Nzongola-Ntalaja: The Congo from Leopold to Kabila, Trefon (ed): Reinventing Order in the Congo, and Clark (ed): The African Stakes of the Congo War).' Historical Materialism, 16 (1). pp. 225-238.

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Abstract

By survival in conditions that are murderous, by evading forms of control and de-linking from the system, people in Congo ultimately limit the reach of the power imposed on them. They have to a great extent isolated, and to a lesser degree diminished, the leadership of Congo and the power of the invaders. The forms of economic survival dispute authority by depriving the state (or predatory nonstate actors) of revenue, whilst maximising the opportunities for survival irrespective of – and in defiance of – the coercion to which people are exposed. The violent regimes in Congo have broken the country to the extent that they were able, but the fact that they cannot break it all attests to the resistance against them: for the powerful, as for the powerless, there may be a will, but there has been no way to achieve it completely.

Item Type: Journal Article
Keywords: Congo, DRC, DR Congo, war, vioelence, resistance, Trefon, Clark, Nzongola-Ntalaja, Marx
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > Department of Development Studies
Legacy Departments > Faculty of Law and Social Sciences > Department of Development Studies
ISSN: 14654466
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1163/156920608X276378
Date Deposited: 09 Dec 2007 13:32
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/2169

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