This is a very welcome study on one of the most neglected conflict countries on this globe. The former ‘African Switzerland’ stumbled on a dangerous path, although Côte d'Ivoire has experienced only short high-intensity phases of civil war (in 2002, 2004 and 2011) and violence did not spread to all parts of the country. Mike McGovern masterfully relates historical facts with more recent developments and this always in search of some overarching analytical frameworks (and not one single explanation). The result is not free from contradictions, but so is the Ivorian reality with episodes of intense rivalry and violent competition alternating with episodes of collusion or fraternity among the very same actors. The fundamental argument of the book is in fact that the seemingly monolithic explanations put forward by political entrepreneurs in the form of ideologies should be understood as much more ‘fragile, conjunctural, and temporary’ than is claimed. This general argument helps to allow for a small amount of optimism about the future of Côte d'Ivoire.

The book is divided into an introduction, five substantial chapters and a conclusion. The chapter on ‘pillage and principle: making distinctions in a frontier zone’ sets the scene of the Ivorian conflict. Ecology, culture, economy and politics of both the semi-arid, Muslim north exposed to centuries of state-building and the originally sparsely populated forest zones of the south that knew only small-scale chiefdoms are juxtaposed – but the description does not halt here. McGovern introduces the notion of ‘thirdness’ to draw attention to important elements kept in mind by all actors engaging in apparently binary antagonistic struggles. In this context the third geographical and cultural zone of Côte d'Ivoire is the eastern Akan heartland.

The following chapter on ‘politics of ressentiment’ touches on the complex that arguably received most scholarly attention (with regard to Côte d'Ivoire) over the past decade: the politics of exclusion or belonging, and discourses on violence.

The fourth chapter (‘decolonization and dramaturgy’) is probably where the author adds most to the existing literature on Côte d'Ivoire. ‘This is play’ (the title of a sub-chapter) is what McGovern attributes not only to conventional political acting but also to violent behaviour on different levels of the political game, down to the violent acts of youth militias exposing their ‘metacommunicative aspect’. The author analyses the expressive side of violence, rhetoric and music (the famous Coupé Décalé), the breaking of unwritten rules and the use of a distinguished ‘French’ discourse on revolution and republicanism even when politicians advocated a radical break with France. Interestingly, McGovern hypothesises that the relatively low death toll of the Ivoirian conflict (compared with Liberia or Rwanda) may be linked to the extraordinary sense of ‘play’ by many political actors. He also suggests that dramaturgy might be more important to explain why some young men choose to fight than material motivations. McGovern manages to show that some discourses and ideas are powerful as they attract both young and old, middle-classes and the poor creating a convergence of high and low cultures. This field of study may indeed be situated on the appropriate intermediate level of analysis – between that of institutions and that of the individual – to explain important features of violent conflict. Less clear is how one can detect analytically when the limit of the acceptable is passed and whether this was intended. Is a given youth leader simply ‘carried away’ by his own rhetoric? Or does he act by design? McGovern concedes that the November 2004 events were beyond the limits of play. One of the obvious questions one may be tempted to ask is whether the last episode of the Ivorian conflict (November 2010–April 2011, only covered in the rather pessimistic afterword) would also fall completely in this analytical framework: while the behaviour of both opposing camps exposes some elements of ‘play’ with numerous acts of threat and intimidation (i.e. communication), and the bending of rules by invoking some others (i.e. game), it is obvious that whether violence had not spun out of control during terrible weeks of violence and counter-violence in both Abidjan and the South-West. Can and should the top elites (Ouattara, Soro, Bédié and the imprisoned Gbago) plus the crucial middle-level elites return to the ‘play’ mode?

The fifth chapter relates the Ivorian crisis to the political economy of cocoa production following classical works on this topic (Schachter Morgenthau, Widner, Losch). McGovern adds what he experienced in terms of the ‘reformed’ system under Gbagbo to older studies analysing the system of the filière from the 1960s to the 1990s. McGovern not only shows that the ‘basic technique’ of making the political elite profit from the cocoa business while farmers are exploited was already in place under Houphouët-Boigny, but that it was simply modified (and maybe made more sophisticated) under Gbagbo.

A sixth chapter is a tribute to the Manchester school of ethnography (“Neither peace nor war: The sociology of a state of emergency”). This is a further chapter that breaks new grounds by focusing on low-level and middle-level functionaries. McGovern shows that those mediating figures play an essential role both in the choreography of the Ivorian crisis and in its prolongation. One part of the chapter is devoted to ‘checkpoint ethnography’. Here one may object that not all security forces should be presented as ‘middle-level actors,’ especially as regards both generals and the rank and file. A decent analysis of the Ivorian military with all its scissions, corporate demands, political ambitions and alignments, military shortcomings and ensuing frustrations is still a major research gap (the best papers on the subject date back to the year 2000). But the chapter which includes eight pages on the the third assistant to the mayor of Guiglo convinces at least this reader ‘that bureaucrats and other middle-level figures are supremely important to understanding how power operates on the ground’.

Some of the topics raised in passing may deserve closer attention … or less! Their relative importance does not always become quite clear. International actors and back-stages are mentioned only in passing (mainly in the afterword), though they certainly played a prominent role between 2002 and 2007. Question-marks remain with regard to the role of religious discourse. The link between charismatic prophets and the discourse of Gbagbo's Front Populaire Ivoirien is presented as ‘neither coincidental nor necessarily the product of a master plan spanning religious, political and military realms’. But what was it then?

This book builds bridges between anthropologists and political scientists and thus if nothing else merits a large readership in both disciplines. McGovern's consistent effort to go back in time to find the roots of current economic, social and political phenomena is furthermore laudable and sets standards for country monographs on war and peace.