Social Science Research Council

"Looking Within and Between: Women and Religious Transformations in Mozambique"

My ethnographic field research will examine women’s participation in healing churches and “traditional” practices of spirit-mediumship in central Mozambique. In recent years, unprecedented growth in Pentecostal-Charismatic churches has coincided with increasing numbers of spirit-mediums and “epidemics” of sorcery accusations in geographically dispersed regions of the world. Literature related to these phenomena has centered analyses on individual types of religious communities, thereby limiting the types of questions addressed. 

By contrast, this study does not limit research to a single type of religious group, but focuses on women, who form the conspicuous majority of participants across these dynamic traditions. This approach will situate the study both within and between different communities of spiritual healing, enabling me to explore how different religious movements are inter-related. The purpose of this research is to provide an ethnographic account of the ways in which women’s experiences are articulated and mediated through different religious frameworks, with significant social impacts. As the relevance of religion to current political, economic and social life grows, it is becoming more imperative to explore how religious transformations are entangled with the contexts in which they are found. This research will thus offer a different angle to approach turbulent social contexts shaped by global economic and political transformations.