Negotiating relationships in transition: war, famine, and embodied accountability in Mozambique
Article
Article Title | Negotiating relationships in transition: war, famine, and embodied accountability in Mozambique |
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ERA Journal ID | 7002 |
Article Category | Article |
Authors | |
Author | Igreja, Victor |
Journal Title | Comparative Studies in Society and History: an international quarterly |
Journal Citation | 61 (4), pp. 774-804 |
Number of Pages | 31 |
Year | 2019 |
Place of Publication | United Kingdom |
ISSN | 0010-4175 |
1475-2999 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417519000264 |
Web Address (URL) | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/negotiating-relationships-in-transition-war-famine-and-embodied-accountability-in-mozambique/CAAC4E979078C22B14AC78236CE60B0F |
Abstract | In conflict-ridden communities, justice specialists gather evidence through verbal accounts and material vestiges of violations committed by repressive regimes and during warfare, to eventually lay legal charges against alleged perpetrators. Anthropologists and sociologists engage with similar contexts but have included conventional bodily rituals, routinized practices, and commemoration practices as sources of knowledge of violent pasts and struggles for historical justice, although without the intention of determining legal accountability. This article shifts from the prevailing focus on repressive regimes and warfare to analyze the famine continuum and expands the procedures for gathering evidence of violations. It shows how, in one Mozambique community, a contingent combination of singular bodily actions, collective imagination and negotiations, and kinship norms evolved and became instrumental in two ways: contested fragments of evidence of violations perpetrated during the experiences of the 1980s famine were refined, and local struggles for accountability conveyed through bodily actions were sustained. The ensuing embodied accountability reshaped relationships by overcoming silence and denial, exposing ordinary perpetrators of violations, and cementing memories of guilt in the landscape. To capture the diversity of legacies of violations marred by fragile evidence, we must be attentive to the versatility of singular bodily actions. We need to consider the multiplicity of meanings, contexts, and perpetrators and how those in conflict zones struggle with embodied accountability. |
Keywords | drought, famine, human rights violations, bodily actions, embodied accountability, singular events, imagination, civil war trauma, collective guilt, transitional justice, Mozambique |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 430318. Middle Eastern and North African history |
440107. Social and cultural anthropology | |
489999. Other law and legal studies not elsewhere classified | |
440808. International relations | |
500206. History and philosophy of the social sciences | |
Public Notes | Files associated with this item cannot be displayed due to copyright restrictions. |
Byline Affiliations | School of Humanities and Communication |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q5939/negotiating-relationships-in-transition-war-famine-and-embodied-accountability-in-mozambique
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