Economía, poder y género en Mozambique: mujeres macua creando resistencias en la era global

Abstract

This research seeks to understand the impact of neoliberal globalisation in a region of northern Mozambique whose predominant culture - the Macua - is matrilineal. To this end, fieldwork was carried out between 2018 and 2019 by using participant observation and semi-structured interviewing as the main methodological tools. Departing from the Macua cosmology, aspects that affect the lives of the population, mainly women, are addressed in order to understand the ways in which they articulate the changes and respond to them. In carrying out this task, the thesis is organised around four main axes that guide the analysis, focusing on themes such as the: 1) meaning given to the murder and theft of bodies from the moral economy; 2) knowledge of changes in gender relations, and the articulation for the perpetuation of women’s rights; 3) conceptualisations of development in relation to the negotiation of power and authority; and 4) illness as a language that allows the expression of forms of resistance, mainly among women. Finally, the aim is to build an ethnographic account that contributes to a critical reflection and an analysis of the impacts of global neoliberal policies on everyday life from a local perspective in order to understand and evaluate resilience and resistance strategies that are created in everyday social spaces.