Twins, Albinos and Vanishing Prisoners: A Mozambican Theory of Political Power

dc.contributor.authorGranjo, Paulo
dc.date.accessioned2013-04-11T08:11:35Z
dc.date.available2013-04-11T08:11:35Z
dc.date.issued2010
dc.description.abstractIn coherence with old ethnographic references, twins and albinos are still seen, in southern Mozambique, as the result and the cause of cosmic calamities. They were struck by lightning bolts inside their pregnant mothers, and they will dry the land unless they are buried under special conditions, or just ‘vanish’ from the Earth. The special conditions imposed on their lives and deaths were extrapolated, in recent decades, to depict an unexpected category of people: the political prisoners who vanished from colonial jails, or were sent by the post-indepen­ ence state to ‘re-education camps.’ However, this was not the case of the ‘unproductive’ urbanites who disappeared under domestic exile in the Niassa region. The beliefs about twins and albinos were used in order to express a local moral statement about political power: it is socially threatening to jeopardise the established power; but it is illicit, for a legitimate power, to take unfair decisions about the people under its responsibility.pl_PL
dc.identifier.citationWerkwinkel vol. 5(2), 2010, pp. 73-94.pl_PL
dc.identifier.issn1896-3307
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10593/5845
dc.language.isoenpl_PL
dc.publisherDepartment of Dutch and South African Studies, Faculty of Englishpl_PL
dc.subjectAfricapl_PL
dc.subjectalbino'spl_PL
dc.subjectland dryerspl_PL
dc.subjectMozambiquepl_PL
dc.subjectOperation Productionpl_PL
dc.subjectpolitical prisonerspl_PL
dc.subjectrain ritualspl_PL
dc.subjectsocial contractpl_PL
dc.subjecttwinspl_PL
dc.titleTwins, Albinos and Vanishing Prisoners: A Mozambican Theory of Political Powerpl_PL
dc.typeArtykułpl_PL

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Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
Biblioteka Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego