CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE SIERRA LEONE CONFLICT: A MORAL PRACTICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF CRISIS AND COLONIZATION IN THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. By Munya G. Kabba A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. University of Toronto © Copyright by Munya G. Kabba, 2011 CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE SIERRA LEONE CONFLICT: A MORAL PRACTICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF CRISIS AND COLONIZATION IN THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Munya G. Kabba Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education University of Toronto Abstract This study argues that the Sierra Leone Conflict arose from the society’s failure to institutionalize the post-conventional moral learning organizing principle for collective will formation and for conflict resolution. In this post-traditional society - one artificially constructed from diverse political and cultural groups, without a shared ethos – only mutual (communicative) understanding is appropriate to resolve differences and ensure solidarity. The society’s lack of mutual understanding created crisis tendencies that overburdened her adaptive capacity. By concealing crises tendencies through repression, the state caused their intensification, and eventual explosion into the catastrophic civil conflict. The study aims to illustrate that citizen’s capacity to practice social (communicative) interaction enables them realize the requisite reflexive post conventional moral learning i.e. the social intelligence or problem-solving capacity to effectively resolve conflict and coordinate society. This capacity enables the society decolonize itself, neutralize normative power, dogmatic consciousness, oppressive conventions, influential customs, and systemic imperatives. Thus, the study promotes the cultivation of civic virtues of post conventional morality (justice, ii truthfulness, moral rightness in interaction) as the key to liberate the society from its persistent crisis-inducing colonial organizing principle. As the theory of social evolution is the basis of sociology, which remains the only discipline focusing on society-wide problems, this study has uses it to understand the disruption of Sierra Leone’s constitutional democratic development. Using the rational reconstructive method, the study explicates the problematic validity of reasons adduced to ground norms, principles, policy decisions, and social interactions. Reasons constitute the axis around which processes of reaching understanding revolve; they serve as the foundation or basis for social integration or for constituting a legitimate social order (society). This means that lack of solidarity or social disintegration exemplifies a deficiency in the logic of social interaction, one that is short of the requisite categorical or species-wide moral cognitive consciousness. Finally, for this research, colonization is not necessarily externally induced, but possible in the daily politico-legal, social, and educational domains of the society. This study’s key point is that today’s Sierra Leone can achieve solidarity, and decolonize itself from self-imposed its conventional (authoritarian) organizing principle, only insofar as the state, economy, and civil society can find their limits in the socio-cultural domain of communication. iii Acknowledgement This dissertation could not have been completed without the saving power and instruction from the Spirit of Almighty God – I thank you Lord for your love, guidance, and protection. Without the help of great people you placed in my path, I would not have seen this project through. Many thanks go to my supervisory committee, Professors George Dei, Njoki Wane, Edward O’Sullivan for their caring support, and comments on the dissertation. I am grateful to my thesis supervisor, Professor George Sefa Dei for his expansive critique of the draft of this thesis. His comments help me reformulate my ideas, anticipate possible challenges to this novel (post-metaphysical) approach for comprehensively understanding the Sierra Leone crisis, and by extension, for understanding the connection between the developmental logic and developmental dynamics of contemporary African society. Professor Nathani Njoki Wane’s encouragement and caring support was crucial for the completion of this project. Dr Wane’s advice on presentation was valuable. I appreciate your motherly wisdom. I am grateful to Professor Ed Sullivan for his rigorous comments, particularly on the social psychological dimension of the thesis. It further clarified for me the cognitive/practical connection to the social evolutionary discourse of Africa. Over the years, you have been a great source of encouragement and support.. I also thank Professor Peter Sawchuk for his support with a much needed summer job position, and for his initial comments on the work. I must say this about Kristine Pearson: the department is blessed to have you, and I personally feel blessed to have met you. This thesis would have been extremely stressful without your help. Kristine reminds me of the caring hospitality of my grandma, and my Mum. She always leaves me with the go-get-them-tiger energy after chatting with her. Paul Tsang is another great blessing to Sociology and Equity Studies. His untiring assistance with information and technical help is unique. Kristine and Paul always made me feel great in the SESE space. I thank members of the monthly study group for the vibrant and insightful intellectual exchanges, and for their support during my return trip to Africa: Paul Adjei, Kirk Mark, Elaine, iv Ahmed Ilmi, Donna Outerbridge, and others. I also wish to acknowledge the help of my close friends, Beatrice Ladi, and Nancy Johnson, Janet Bailey, Fatmata, Linda (Kabba) Johnson, and my elders, and mentors, Dr Samuel Ogunboye, Evang. Sunday Solomon, and the DH of CCC, Accra, for their support in this journey. I also thank my Uncle Francis Alexander K. Kabba of Njala University for his support during my stay in Sierra Leone. Finally, I thank my Mum, my guardian angel. Your prayers quicken me. I also pray for the soul of my late Dad, whose spirit with God’s direction helped guide me back to Canada after a two year hiatus in Africa. v DEDICATION The thesis is in memory of those that lost their lives, and became victims of misconceptions of freedom, revolution, and of human arrogance. I also dedicate this work to all those well meaning souls that daily reflect on Africa’s quagmire, and strive to wrest the Continent from its ideological entrapments, and crisis-inducing logics. vi TABLE OF CONTENT ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………….ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………………………………….iv DEDICATION………………………………………………………………………………...vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.0 Statement of the problem…………………………………………………………......1 1.1 Research Questions of the Study…………………………………………………......7 1.2 The Purpose of Study………………………………………………………………….7 1.3 The Historical and Theoretical Context…………………………………………….10 1.4 Personal Location…………………………………………………………………….41 1.5 Learning Objectives and the Significance of the Study…………………………....43 1.6 Limitations of the Study………………………………………………………………47 1.7 Major Terms and Organization of the Study………………………………………49 CHAPTER2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2.0 Cognitive Research Interests and Emancipation………………………………….61 2.1 Philosophy of Language and the Human Emancipatory Interest………………..99 CHAPTER3: METHODOLOGY 3.0 Moral Practical Reconstruction of Historical Materialism………………………102 3.1 Basic Assumptions and Action typologies………………………………………….109 3.2 Data Source and data Analysis……………………………………………………..113 3.4 Framework for Analysis…………………………………………………………….123 3.5 Reliability and Validity……………………………………………………………....128 vii CHAPTER 4: COLONIZED POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND RATIONALIY CRISIS 4.0. Moral Practical Reconstruction of Administrative Crisis………………………..135 4.1 Misconception of Legitimacy and Administrative Crisis…………………………151 4.2 Forms of Understanding and Seizure of Power……………………………………176 4.3 Rationality Crisis as Moral Practical Failure………………………………………193 CHAPTER 5: BETWEEN SYSTEM AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION 5.0 Fusion of State and Market Interests………………………………………………..197 5.1 Dramaturgic Action and Desolation…………………………………………………207 5.2 Fusion of State and Market and Economic Crisis………………………………….233 5.3 Tension between Capitalism and Democracy……………………………………....239 CHAPTER 6: DOMINATION AS LIBERATION 6.0 Reconstructing Dialectic and Legitimation Crisis……………………………………253 6.1 Dialectics of Morality……………………………………………………………………271 6.2 Rationalizing a Revolutionary Paradox……………………………………………..284 6.3 Rationalizing the Guerilla as Moral Actor………………………………………….284 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION: LAW AND MORALITY AS PACEMAKER 7.0 The Search for Practical Reason in Sierra Leone………………………………….321 7.1 Reconstructing Colonization and Crisis…………………………………………….328 7.2 Findings: Critical Insights on Colonization and crisis…………………………….342 7.3 Critical Pedagogy and Communicative Action……………………………………360 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………382 APPENDIX A: Map of Sierra Leone…………………………………………………….....394 viii 1 Chapter 1 Introduction Critical theory is not intended to replace existing approaches to social science inquiry, but to provide a context for assessment of their contributions and limitations.... [It] can be vital for making sense of such bodies of knowledge by liberating them from self understanding…From the perspective of critical theory, the key here is bringing