Seminar
Within the Tuesday Seminar
The Past Never Dies - dynamics of spirits in Mozambique

October 20th, 2009, 17:00 – 19:00, CES Seminar Room, 2nd Floor

Maria Paula Meneses (CES)

Commentary: Elsa Lechner (CES)

This Project aimed, combining history, anthropology and law, to study the witchcraft issues in Mozambique, in the course of the last century, period that experienced rapid and deep social transformations. The authors, as the report points out, defend that witchcraft should be seen not as a residual vestige of ‘traditional’ culture, but rather  as part of a more complex social drama, integrating part of economic, social and political contemporary processes. 

The report points out how witchcraft – seen here in a broad sense – has been continually politicized against the colonial state, during the struggle for national liberation, as well as during the last armed conflict the country experienced, already after independence , as well as during the present regime, being the interpretation and use of witchcraft and spirits continually reconceptualised and renegotiated.  

This Project points out how the Mozambican State, heterogeneous in its action, has come to consume and exploit these disputes, negotiating the participation of other instances of conflict resolution, and even creating space for the emergence of new social actors. At the same time, this Project reveals the complex nature of gender, intergenerational, ethnical, religious relations as well as the intricate network of senses associated to the concept of being Mozambican.
As demonstrates this work, combining a theoretical, documental reflection, with an extensive field work, even though the field of witchcraft is as a matter that has experienced a rising interest in the last years, it still remains a practice and a field of production of sense still very misunderstood.  

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