From War to Peace on the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland

Extended case studies of particular villages and families on the Mozambique-Malawi borderland form the core of this study of villagers from war to peace in Mozambique. While tracing their paths to war, exile and post-war reconstruction, the book reveals the human face of national and transnational crises. This 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 ways, 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 historial circumstnces have variously pitted villagers against one another and fostered co-operation. Questions of trust, moral value and legitimate authority inform ethnographic description, leading to a critique of contemporary analytical approaches to social capital.