Stephen C. Lubkemann

Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War

Fought after 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.

The Transformation of Transnationality among Mozambican Migrants in South Africa

ResumeCet article explore l’emergence d’une communaute immigrante transnationale reliant la region Machaze du Mozambique avec les communes du Vaal en Afrique du sud. Depuis le debut du siecle, Machaze compte sur l’immigration. Mais, la guerre civile au Mozambique a radicalement altere la structure et les implications de la migration Machazienne ainsi que les strategies de mariage. Pendant la guerre et depuis, la polygamie transnationale est devenue plus evidente. Par l’intermediaire de la transnationalisation, la polygamie a emerge comme une strategie visant afaire face a l’instabilite politique et a l’insecurite economique. La polygamie transnationale a fondamentalement altere la structure des menages Machaziens et la signification du mariage, de la migration, de la communaute et de l’identite.

Migratory Coping in Wartime Mozambique: An Anthropology of Violence and Displacement in 'Fragmented Wars'*

Current frameworks for analyzing conflict in developing nations usually focus on the agendas of national-level parties to conflicts. This article draws heavily on the author’s own ethnographic work in central Mozambique to demonstrate how political alignment during the Mozambican civil conflict (1977-92) was regarded by local actors as a tool for engaging in family- and community-level political struggles. Comparing findings from his own work in the district of Machaze to that of other ethnographic researchers who focused on wartime experiences elsewhere in Mozambique, he shows how the means of violence of national-level parties during the civil conflict were appropriated by local actors in service to local forms of social struggle. He proposes the concept of ‘fragmented war’ to describe such contexts in which national ‘civil wars’ take on a large degree of local character and in which there is considerable variation in that local character as a result of sociocultural and ethnic diversity within a country. The article then documents how wartime migration - as one of the most visible and consequential strategies for reacting to violence - was organized primarily as a response to such micro-level political struggles rather than merely to the state of hostilities between national-level political actors. Different local ‘logics of violence’ thus produced different patterns of wartime displacement throughout Mozambique. Some of the key historical conditions that made wartime violence in Mozambique susceptible to ‘fragmentation’ are reviewed, in order to reflect more broadly on what general conditions might produce ‘fragmentations of violence’ in other war contexts. The article concludes with a discussion of how anthropological approaches can contribute to the demographic analysis of forced migration in culturally diversified war zones.

Warscape Ethnography in West Africa and the Anthropology of "Events"

This article introduces some of the challenges of doing ethnography in contexts such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—places where violence and the certainty of uncertainty have become the backdrop for social interaction. It also considers the potential contributions to anthropological theory of such an undertaking. In particular it outlines a fundamental re-orientation towards the concept of the event. Drawing contrasts with conventional anthropological understandings of how small scenarios (social situations) and paradigmatic social events (rituals) speak to broader processes, this piece argues for an analytical recasting of the event as a moment in which cultural creativity is harnessed to the tasks of effecting and legitimizing the social transformations that crises often demand. Such events affirm the continuity of social groups even as they participate in the re-organization of social practice and are thus ultimately relevant to any anthropology of actors who confront and seek to effect change.

Neither State Nor Custom – Just Naked Power: The Consequences of Ideals-Oriented Rule of Law Policy-Making in Liberia

In this article we provide an empirically grounded critique of the internationallydriven ‘Rule of Law’ policy approach in post-conflict Liberia by highlighting the consequences of policy-makers difficulties in coming to terms with the realities of legal pluralism. Informed by a ‘progressive’ intent to establish a single formal justice system for all Liberians, this approach has promoted policies that ignore or seek to constrain customary justice institutions because they are seen as violating human rights and falling short of international justice standards – even though they are preferred by most of the population. These efforts also involve a top-down approach to reconstituting and reforming the formal legal system that, to date, has largely neglected capacity-building at the local level while emphasizing narrow technical remedies (such as legislation revision) that fail to account for social, economic, and political realities. This approach has undermined the customary justice systems without improving the capacity or performance of the formal justice system – resulting in a growing ‘justice vacuum’. For most Liberians the quest to obtain justice in this ‘vacuum’ has increasingly become little more than an effort to secure advantage over opponents through the mobilization of social networks, by exercising political and/or economic power, or through other extrajudicial means. In this context ‘customary and ‘state/formal’ justice institutions are not approached by most Liberians as distinct avenues for seeking justice but rather as poles in a single power topography. This topography includes a wide array of other actors and institutions that are not a part of either the formal or the customary justice systems but who are often appealed to and frequently affect justice outcomes. In conclusion we consider several political effects of the constraint of customary justice and the broader implications of dismissing pluralism for Liberia’s delicate post-conflict peace building and political development processes.

Where to Be an Ancestor

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