Sovereignty.: The Mozambican President and the Ordering of Sorcery

Why does the Mozambican state attempt to control <i>uroi</i> —a force that is seemingly incompatible with the state rationale of both the postindependence Afro-Marxist era as well as the post–civil war period of neoliberal democracy? This chapter will broach this question through untangling the problematic relations between spirit and state within the context of AMETRAMO <i>(Associação da Medicina Tradicional de Moçambique</i> —the Association for Traditional Medicine in Mozambique), a state-sanctioned institution organizing so-called traditional healers. I will argue that the case of AMETRAMO exemplifies a statal mechanism for capture and control of the force fields and potencies of the

DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv8bt1ff.16