Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in WarFought in the wake of a decade of armed struggle against colonialism, the Mozambican civil war lasted from 1977 to 1992, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives while displacing millions more. As conflicts across the globe span decades and generations, Stephen C. Lubkemann suggests that we need a fresh perspective on war when it becomes the context for normal life rather than an exceptional event that disrupts it. Culture in Chaos calls for a new point of departure in the ethnography of war that investigates how the inhabitants of war zones live under trying new conditions and how culture and social relations are transformed as a result. Lubkemann focuses on how Ndau social networks were fragmented by wartime displacement and the profound effect this had on gender relations. Demonstrating how wartime migration and post-conflict return were shaped by social struggles and interests that had little to do with the larger political reasons for the war, Lubkemann contests the assumption that wartime migration is always involuntary. His critical reexamination of displacement and his engagement with broader theories of agency and social change will be of interest to anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and demographers, and to anyone who works in a war zone or with refugees and migrants. |
Contents
1 | |
I Migration and Social Transformation before the War | 45 |
II The Social Conditioning of War | 103 |
III The Social Condition in War | 187 |
IV War as a Socially Transformative Condition | 251 |
Other editions - View all
Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War Stephen C. Lubkemann No preview available - 2008 |
Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War Stephen C. Lubkemann No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
administrator agency aldeias Anthropology areas Arquivo Histórico authority behavior camps chapter Chimoio Chipinge churches Circunscrição de Mossurize colonial communais Companhia de Moçambique-Secretaria conffict cultural discourse displacement district dynamics economic edited effects Espungabera fieldwork forced FRELIMO gendered growing number Histórico de Moçambique household husband increasingly interviewed labor migration living lobola Lubkemann maachambas Machava Machaze Machazian migrants Machazian social Machazian women Manica Manica e Sofala Manica Province Maputo marriage Matsangaiisse migrants milicias military Mossurize Mozambican civil war Mozambique narratives Ndau nyangas officials organized particular policies political polygyny population Portuguese postcolonial postconflict refugees régulos relationships Relatório relocation RENAMO repatriation reported resettled residents return to Machaze Rhodesia role rural Sebokeng secretarios social condition social relations social struggles sought South Africa specific stay strategies structural violence throughout tion Tongogara townships transnational polygyny uloi UNHCR villages war-time migration war-time social war-time violence wife wives Zimbabwe Zimbabwean