Book Review: Childhood Deployed: Remaking Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone by Susan Shepler
Childhood Deployed is a well-written and accessible account of a set of highly complicated issues. Based on her almost three decades of ethnographic research and other involvements in Sierra Leone, author Susan Shepler analyzes the implications of the participation of minors in Sierra Leone’s infamous civil war and the challenges to their postconflict reintegration. Her analysis is presented through everyday encounters with former combatants, child rights practitioners, and a range of adult Sierra Leonean actors who contribute their opinions and implicit assumptions about the challenges of reintegrating child soldiers, and their notions of youth and childhood more generally.