4. Betterment Versus Complicity: Struggling with Patron–Client Logics in Sierra Leone

Patron–client logics have long provided a crucial lens for the analysis and interpretation of sociopolitical imagination and agency in the Upper Guinea Coast and even in Sub-Sahara Africa in general. However, this lens also comes with limitations: as long as one expects patron–client relations, there is a good chance that one will (only) find relations that fit the patron–client picture. Menzel’s chapter explores a different perspective. Based on field research in southern Sierra Leone, she provides examples from interviews in which her informants not only voiced frustrations over a lack of “good” patronage but also hinted at more fundamental struggles. These examples indicate a contradiction between working toward individual/societal betterment and complicity in patron–client logics, which cement an undesirable status quo.