Accounting for disaster: Memories of war in Mozambique

Elísio Macamo

Africa Spectrum, 2006, vol. 41, issue 2, pages 199-219

Abstract: This paper seeks to understand the notion of disaster through the description and analysis of memories of a civil war in Mozambique. The paper claims that extreme events as such do not constitute disaster. Rather, it is the way in which they disrupt everyday life, understood in the phenomenological sense of a taken for granted world, that my turn them into a disaster. The findings are based on research carried out in Mozambique among war refugees on the periphery of a major town in the south of the country. The interviews are analysed using techniques drawn from conversational analysis to recover the sense in which everyday life is a practical accomplishment of individuals.

Date: 2006

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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gig:afjour:v:41:y:2006:i:2:p:199-219

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