Where To Be An Ancestor? Reconstituting Socio-Spiritual Worlds Among Displaced Mozambicans

This paper examines the effect of spiritual beliefs and local religious institutions on displaced Mozambicans' strategies for reconstituting ‘social worlds’ (Marx 1990) which incorporate ancestral spirits. It examines how wartime violence was perceived to affect these ‘socio‐spiritual worlds’ and how wartime social change infused post‐conflict resettlement choices with specific ‘socio‐spiritual dilemmas’. It adapts Hirschman's (1970) classic typology of ‘exit’, ‘voice’ and ‘loyalty’ responses to organizational change to develop an analytical framework for understanding the types of options that are pursued to resolve these dilemmas and reconstitute socio‐spiritual worlds. Finally, it examines the role of social power in determining which options are available to different categories of social actors.