Turf Wars: Territory and Citizenship in the Contemporary State. BETTINA NG'WENO: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Abstract

Turf Wars is an elegantly written and richly ethnographic look at the intersection of state formation, race, and minority ethnic status in Colombia, focusing on Afrodescendant communities in the southwestern highlands of Cauca, a region better known in the academic literature for its indigenous activism than for its Black communities. Bettina Ng'weno provides a textured ethnography about why territory and race matter to Afrocolombians, in an era when they have been recognized as ethnic citizens with a claim to autonomous territories, at least, on the Pacific coast, where they are in the majority.