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Sierra Leone’s conflict has often been characterized as a ‘crisis of youth’. For some, the post-war resurgence of grassroots associational life represents the unleashing of long-suppressed youth egalitarianism, yet this analysis tends to ignore the role of international aid in providing an economic incentive for impoverished Sierra Leoneans to embrace formal association. Case study evidence also shows that politics of ‘community’ identification and moral economies of patronage continue to affect post-war aid. Evidence of post-war social change can nevertheless be found outside the development sector. Diamond mining has long served as a driver of cultural modernization in Sierra Leone and detailed examination of post-war associational life in Kono District reveals that new foci and techniques of social activism have emerged since the end of the civil war. The decline of artisanal mining, with the expansion of …