Michel Naepels explores 'intranquillity' in Katanga through new book

Anthropologist Michel Naepels has published 'Chroniques de l'intranquillité' (Chronicles of Intranquillity), a book examining violence, predation, and protection in postcolonial contexts, based on fieldwork in Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. The work, co-edited by École des Hautes Études des Sciences Sociales, Gallimard, and Le Seuil, draws on missions conducted between 2011 and 2016 in the Pweto region near the Zambian border. Naepels describes 'intranquillity' as the permanent state of uncertainty faced by populations trapped in Congo's wars, amid an economy of predation and privatization of public prerogatives. The book blends field journal, reflective essay, and political meditation, focusing on how violence becomes an ordinary mode of social relations rather than an exceptional event. It extends his earlier research on New Caledonia and conflicting memories, presenting concrete, ambiguous situations where actors negotiate power dynamics. Naepels emphasizes his commitment to the tradition of social anthropology, grounded in ethnographic fieldwork attentive to diverse temporalities, echoes of the past, and hopes for the future.