Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyse the Congolese War Economy through tree main concepts: the war habitus, the anthropological regionalism in the Great Lakes Region and the Middleman figure. I will show how social network and refugee camps can be understand as an economic infrastructure to sell ore hand by hand

Paper long abstract:

How anthropological interactions in Eastern DRC and in the Great Lakes region enable the war economy to take place as a normality? I will conceptualise two main figures, the "middlemen" (Bonacich) and the "masterless men" (Trapido) (versus the figure of the "big men") to show how "informal" social network (de Villers, de Boeck, Ayimpam) can be understood as an economic infrastructure (Elyachar) to extract ore and sell it hand by hand. Through a multi-sited fieldwork, I will focus on two main activities: rebel's recruitment as a war force and ore traffic as a war profit. I will focus on refugee camps as a strategic place.

As factual as these activities are (rebels recruitment and ore trafficking), the anthropological context needs to be understood to show how people can so easily take part in the regional war economy. More precisely, I will draw two contextual concept before drawing my main argument, I call the first one the "war habitus", considering that I will demonstrate why the Bourdieusian concept needs to be contextualized. And the second one will show how big the regional social interrelations are among Eastern Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda (or even Kenya), questioning the very notion of citizenship and nationality (and so the notion of "refugee" and "National State") in an anthropological and regional perspective. This paper will be an economic, conflict and post-conflict analysis that contributes to the understanding of the social interactions in the Great Lakes region.