Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of Frelimo's "Female Detachment"

West, Harry G.

doi:10.1353/anq.2000.0015

Cited by 64 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…West (2000) identifies two major strands in this scholarship. The first is a Western psychological approach that asserts that exposure to violence leads to youths' loss of innocence; proponents argue that such young people go on to perpetuate violence throughout their lives, whether as victims of violence or its (often coerced) perpetrators (e.g., Boothby 1986).…”

Section: Youth and Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first is a Western psychological approach that asserts that exposure to violence leads to youths' loss of innocence; proponents argue that such young people go on to perpetuate violence throughout their lives, whether as victims of violence or its (often coerced) perpetrators (e.g., Boothby 1986). The second approach centers on cultural agency and understands youth as able to adapt effectively to violent situations in culturally specific ways (Peters & Richards 1998, West 2000. Even when these two perspectives are combined, the romantic belief in a "lost generation" as the ultimate victims of war gives way to an analysis that recognizes both young people's agency in wartime and its very real constraints (Assal & Farrell 1992).…”

Section: Youth and Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Youth and Cultural Practice

Bucholtz

2002

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

352

142

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s Abstract The study of youth played a central role in anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century, giving rise to a still-thriving cross-cultural approach to adolescence as a life stage. Yet the emphasis on adolescence as a staging ground for integration into the adult community often obscures young people's own cultural agency or frames it solely in relation to adult concerns. By contrast, sociology has long considered youth cultures as central objects of study, whether as deviant subcultures or as class-based sites of resistance. More recently, a third approach-an anthropology of youth-has begun to take shape, sparked by the stimuli of modernity and globalization and the ambivalent engagement of youth in local contexts. This broad and interdisciplinary approach revisits questions first raised in earlier sociological and anthropological frameworks, while introducing new issues that arise under current economic, political, and cultural conditions. The anthropology of youth is characterized by its attention to the agency of young people, its concern to document not just highly visible youth cultures but the entirety of youth cultural practice, and its interest in how identities emerge in new cultural formations that creatively combine elements of global capitalism, transnationalism, and local culture.

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Section: Youth and Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Youth and Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Youth and Cultural Practice

Bucholtz

2002

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

352

142

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“…Arriving safely in Tanzania meant that many refugees necessarily re-established social relations. But under the auspices of FRELIMO and the Tanzanian authorities, they often found that their opportunities were usually limited as their gender roles and emotional vulnerability were shaped for the purposes of winning the anti-colonial war (West 2000;Sheldon 2002;Isaacman 1984;Machel 1969). Gender and age were especially important factors and played a determinant role in the refugee experience as young men were often conscripted into the military wing of FRELIMO.…”

Section: Benevolent Humanitarianism Meets Nascent Statecraftmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building a revolutionary constituency: Mozambican refugees and the development of the FRELIMO proto-state, 1964–1968

Panzer

2013

Social Dynamics

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During the early 1960s, many Mozambicans fled from the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa to the sanctuary and friendly border of Tanganyika (Tanzania) to escape the escalating violence of the anti-colonial war. These Mozambicans experienced, like many political refugees, a crisis of status during this migration. In seeking to survive their migration to Tanzania, many existing social relations among Mozambican refugees were temporarily suspended during this transit. Under the auspices of FRELIMO 1 and the Tanzanian authorities, Mozambican refugees often found that their opportunities during this social breakdown were usually limited and redirected for the purposes of winning the anti-colonial war. Many of these people, regardless of gender or age, were also socially transformed by a continuum of survival skills that I call the bio-social experience. Many Mozambican refugees opted to work with FRELIMO as products of their own individual bio-social experiences. With the assistance of this revolutionary constituency of Mozambican refugees, FRELIMO's institutional strategies and infrastructure projects inside Tanzania and in northern Mozambique offered an opportunity to demonstrate its early proto-state hegemony and revolutionary Pragmatism. IntroductionThe Mozambican refugees who fled to Tanzania during the initial violence of the anti-colonial war in late 1964 became an important revolutionary constituency in the early hegemonic development of FRELIMO. These Mozambican refugees, regardless of gender or age, experienced a crisis of status (like many war refugees) and yet possessed heretofore unavailable opportunities for social and individual reinvention under the auspices of FRELIMO cadres during the formative years of Mozambique's liberation in the 1960s. When Mozambicans decided to flee, their lives were disrupted and their personal safety and security were jeopardised. 2 Their lives as individuals and family members were thrown into a temporary state of social flux, thereby suspending in the short term many of the normative institutions, practices, and expectations held in their respective communities. This amorphous and volatile shift of social conventions allowed for a temporary break from norms and customary duties.

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“…123 One anthropological study that examined the experience of female fighters from Mozambique who participated in the FRELIMO independence movement is particularly useful because it was conducted two decades after women put down their arms. 124 Although a demobilization process occurred, it took no special consideration of female combatants and the difficulties that face them as they reintegrated into a patriarchal society after assuming traditionally "male" roles. During combat, when women began to frequently appear with guns slung over their shoulders, the elders of villages complained to guerilla leaders that this presented "an unacceptable challenge to 'traditional' societal relationships."…”

Section: Effects Of Transitional Justice On Colombian Female Combmentioning

confidence: 99%

False Dichotomies of Transitional Justice: Gender, Conflict and Combatants in Colombia

Tabak

2011

SSRN Journal

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Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of Frelimo's "Female Detachment"

Cited by 64 publications

References 23 publications

Youth and Cultural Practice

Youth and Cultural Practice

Building a revolutionary constituency: Mozambican refugees and the development of the FRELIMO proto-state, 1964–1968

False Dichotomies of Transitional Justice: Gender, Conflict and Combatants in Colombia

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