Olika regimer, samma ledarskap : Om det lokala maktfältets logik på landsbygden i Moçambique

Different regimes, same leadership – on the logic of the local field of power in rural Mozambique. The article examines how traditional leaders in Mozambique have maintained their positions of power and under which circumstances they have been challenged throughout Portuguese colonialism, the first years of Independence with Marxist policies, and present day multiparty democracy and market society. The article, using ethnographic field material from northern Mozambique in combination with Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, concludes that the key symbolic capital of the traditional leaders is the defence of dignity (dignidade) of people, materialised in the land. This capital is the resource that defines challenges and continuity in the local fields of power, explaining their relative immunity towards legal and formal changes in macro level policy. Immunity towards social and political changes on the local level has created another, paralel, history of Mozambique that is influenced by, but not similar to, the grand, episodic Mozambiquian modern history