Mats Utas is a professor in Anthropology and head of the department of Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University. His research mainly focused on conflict and post conflict situations based on extensive fieldwork in West Africa, mainly Liberia and Sierra Leon.
In this video he contributes with his analysis on gang culture based on post-conflict Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leon and draws some observations on organisational structures and contexts in which criminal groups emerge.
Are these patterns that dissimilar from those we see around gangs in Europe and North America?
Filming and editing by Lost in a Cup’s video director Carl Broberg (2020).