Culture in Chaos
An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Notes on the Text
Introduction. The “Ordering of Violent Things”: War and Displacement
Section 1. Migration and Social Transformation before the War
Chapter 1. Contending with Colonialism: Migration and Resistance
Chapter 2. Other Struggles: Migration and the Transformation of Social Relations
Section 2. The Social Conditioning of War
Chapter 3. Imposing the New Mozambique: Sowing the Seeds of Postcolonial Disillusion
Chapter 4. Society and the State: Mutual Misrecognition at the Gathering of War
Chapter 5. Prosecuting Life by Other Means: The Social Logic of Violence in a Fragmented War
Section 3. The Social Condition in War
Chapter 6. Terrains of Displacement: War-time Mobility and Immobility
Chapter 7. Tambem Aqui Fazemos Amor:Living in War
Section 4. War as a Socially Transformative Condition
Chapter 8. Postconflict Displacements: The Social Problematics of Refugee Return
Chapter 9. Transnational Contentions: The Moral Economy of Postconflict Migration
Chapter 10. Where to Be an Ancestor? The Struggle for the Postconflict Social Imagination
Notes
References
“Sharp, eloquent, and utterly persuasive, this remarkable ethnography changes the way we look at violence and war. In Lubkemann’s skillful hands, we are witness to not just resilience but the constant forging of new social fabric in the most improbable of human conditions.”
“Culture in Chaos is the product of over a decade of research in Mozambique and South Africa, and should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Mozambique conflict, and indeed conflict and displacement more generally. Lubkemann’s work is empirically rich and theoretically innovative, seeking to understand how and why particular forms of violence emerge as part of the ‘social condition’ of war. It reinforces the point—often ignored—that war and displacement evolve in different ways, with often unexpected outcomes.”
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