Hunting the Ethical State: The Benkadi Movement of Côte d'Ivoire

by Joseph Hellweg

In the 1990s a nationwide crime wave overtook Côte d’Ivoire. The Ivoirian police failed to control the situation, so a group of poor, politically marginalized, and mostly Muslim men took on the role of the people’s protectors as part of a movement they called Benkadi. These men were dozos—hunters skilled in ritual sacrifice—and they applied their hunting and occult expertise, along with the ethical principles implicit in both forms of knowledge, to the tracking and capturing of thieves. Meanwhile, as Benkadi emerged, so too did the ethnic, regional, and religious divisions that would culminate in Côte d’Ivoire’s 2002–07 rebellion. 

Hunting the Ethical State reveals how dozos worked beyond these divisions to derive their new roles as enforcers of security from their ritual hunting ethos. Much as they used sorcery to shape-shift and outwit game, they now transformed into unofficial police, and their ritual networks became police bureaucracies. Though these Muslim and northern-descended men would later resist the state, Joseph Hellweg demonstrates how they briefly succeeded at making a place for themselves within it. Ultimately, Hellweg interprets Benkadi as a flawed but ingenious and thoroughly modern attempt by non-state actors to reform an African state.

312 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2011

Reviews

[Jenni Geli · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can tell that the author is highly knowledgeable about the Benkadi. That said, it probably shouldn’t have been presented under the premise that their role as protectors in response to a failing police force was the main focus. In reality, this read much more like an anthropological study of the Benkadi overall, with their work as protectors only covered in a few pages.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to take 3 classes under the tutelage of Dr. Hellweg. He assigned this book on the Benkadi Movement of the Dozo Hunters of Cote D'Ivoire during a class I had that was entitled "Words and Power in Africa: Orality as Literacy." It was an excellent class and this book was the perfect note to end the class with. He is a truly brilliant man, and excellent mentor, and his writing style is as succinct as it is pleasurable to read.