Mats Utas
Mats Utas is associate professor and senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute. Between 2009 and 2011 he headed the Africa programme at the Swedish National Defence College. He has published in journals such as African Affairs and Journal of Modern African Studies and in edited books on historical warfare, child and youth combatants, media, refugees, gender in war zones, post-war reconstruction and urban poverty. He is the co-author of Navigating youth, generating adulthood: social becoming in an African context (NAI Press, 2006). Utas has conducted extensive fieldwork in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and more recently researched the roles of businessmen in the Somali conflict during fieldworks in Kenya and Dubai.
Books by Mats Utas
African Conflicts and Informal Power
Big Men and Networks
Edited by Mats Utas
In the aftermath of an armed conflict in Africa, the international community both produces and demands from local partners a variety of blueprints on how to reconstruct state and society. The aim is to re-formalize the state after what is viewed as a period of fragmentation and informalization caused by armed conflict. In reality, both African economies and politics are very much informal in character, with informal actors (including so-called ‘Big Men’) often using their positions in… (more information)