From War to Peace on the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:5th Dec '01
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
From War to Peace on the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland is the first full-length ethnography to tell villagers' stories from war to peace in Mozambique. Extended case studies of particular villages and families on the Mozambique-Malawi borderland form the core of the book. While tracing their paths to war, exile and post-war reconstruction, the book reveals the human face of national and transnational crises. This detailed study takes the reader beyond the stereotypes which often accompany interventions into humanitarian catastrophes. The villagers in this book are not nameless victims but persons with social relationships; participants, in their own way, in the histories of colonialism, nationalism, labour migration, guerrilla war, exile, repatriation and, most recently, liberal democracy. A major contribution of the book is to show how changing historical circumstances have variously pitted villagers against one another and fostered co-operation. Questions of trust, moral value and legitimate authority inform ethnographic description, leading to an innovative critique of current analytical approaches to social capital. Those interested in humanitarian catastrophes, African politics, refugee studies and development studies will be inspired by its detailed rebuttal of stereotypes which continue to represent Africans as helpless victims.
A valuable contribution to the literature on contemporary Mozambique as well as an innovative ethnography of a war, its antecedents, and its aftermath. an exceptionally rich study! Englund's central achievement is to provide a nuanced and complex sense of what the process of war and displacement was really about. Those who saw the difference at the time of the Mozambican civil war between the Malawian side - teeming with life - and the Mozambican side - eerily empty except for some destroyed structures - will pick up this book eagerly in an attempt to understand what they saw. They will not be disappointed! Englund shows himself a deft ethnographer in his analysis of kinship! [the book's] main strength is the careful observation of everyday life. A valuable contribution to the literature on contemporary Mozambique as well as an innovative ethnography of a war, its antecedents, and its aftermath. an exceptionally rich study! Englund's central achievement is to provide a nuanced and complex sense of what the process of war and displacement was really about. Those who saw the difference at the time of the Mozambican civil war between the Malawian side - teeming with life - and the Mozambican side - eerily empty except for some destroyed structures - will pick up this book eagerly in an attempt to understand what they saw. They will not be disappointed! Englund shows himself a deft ethnographer in his analysis of kinship! [the book's] main strength is the careful observation of everyday life.
ISBN: 9780748615773
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 334g
232 pages