This book focuses on 'imaginative sociology,' demonstrating the techniques by which social science may capture the contexts that human beings construct and inhabit. It argues for the continuing value of a historical anthropology in which ethnography and culture remain vital.

Over the years John and Jean Comaroff have broadened the study of culture and society with their reflections on power and meaning. In their work on Africa and colonialism they have explored some of the fundamental questions of social science, delving into the nature of history and human agency, culture and consciousness, ritual and representation. How are human differences constructed and institutionalized, transformed and (sometimes) effaced, empowered and (sometimes) resisted? How do local cultures articulate with global forms? How is the power of some people over others built, sustained, eroded, and negated? How does the social imagination take shape in novel yet collectively meaningful ways? Addressing these questions, the essays in this volume-several never before published-work toward an "imaginative sociology," demonstrating the techniques by which social science may capture the contexts that human beings construct and inhabit. In the introduction, the authors offer their most complete statement to date on the nature of historical anthropology. Standing apart from the traditional disciplines of social history and modernist social science, their work is dedicated to discovering how human worlds are made and signified, forgotten and remade.

As the 21st century began, Algeria, Morocco, and North Sudan launched some much-publicised "reconciliation" policies, or, in the case of North Sudan, "pacification" policies. Algeria, following its Clemency policy (1995) and Civil Concord Law (1999), held a referendum in 2005 and subsequently implemented the measures of its Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation. This charter is Algeria's latest policy aimed at settling the accounts of a murderous decade (1990s) between the state and armed Islamic groups. In Morocco, an arbitration committee was set up in 1999, followed by the Equity and Reconciliation Commission in 2004, to turn the page on the "Years of Lead"-a period during the rule of King Hassan II during which state crimes such as torture, imprisonment, and murder were committed. Finally, in Sudan (North Sudan since 2011), peace negotiations were held in 1989 and a peace process has been ongoing since 2005, with an aim to resolve violent conflicts and war crimes that are shaking Darfur and North Kordofan. At the centre of all these reconciliation and pacification mechanisms lies a practice that has been scarcely studied: (monetary) compensation for the crimes committed. Shedding light on this under-studied topic from the North African field, this volume investigates: What meanings can compensation have when it is aimed at repairing crimes? Is it necessary, sufficient, or admissible? How can it be implemented and accepted by the victims themselves and by society? These questions about compensation lead the reader through discussions on the nature of crime, punishment, reparation, reconciliation, and the way these concepts were and are now understood in these three North African countries.

This collection highlights the work of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Urgent Anthropology Fellowships fund, which supports research into communities whose culture and social life are under immediate threat. Created by George Appell in response to the distress he experienced working with a traumatized community of swidden cultivators in Borneo, who were struggling to survive after relocation in what Appell describes as a ‘cultural concentration camp’, the fund was established to identify ways of supporting and strengthening such communities through ethnographic work. Since 1995, Urgent Anthropology Fellows have worked with many displaced communities, whether found in refugee camps, resettled in kindred communities across national borders or in environments hostile to their traditional way of life; or whether suffering from the aftermath of civil war or the intrusion of foreigners in search of minerals. Despite the diversity of circumstances in these case studies, this book shows some of the common strategies that emerge in helping displaced communities regain some control over their own destinies. These include membership of social networks, access to natural resources, land ownership and self sufficiency, autonomy in local judicial procedures and economic activities as well as the celebration of traditional rituals, all of which lessen the potential powerlessness of displaced communities. Any anthropologist or NGO worker, and indeed anyone who works with, or cares about, vulnerable communities and the rights of indigenous peoples, will gain much from the accumulation of experience and insights offered herein.