Regional and Local Dynamics in the Shaping of the Centre for African Studies in Maputo, 1976–1986

Abstract

The article proposes two features without which social science research work in the Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA – Centre for African Studies) at Eduardo Mondlane University during the period 1976–86 cannot be fully grasped. First, the conflicting, ambiguous and productive interactions between the Mozambican state's attempts to construct socialism, and the strategies of the South African ‘empire’ in trying to build a hegemonic bloc in the region, particularly in its radical form of maintaining an economic and military destabilisation policy in Mozambique. Second, the conflicting, ambiguous and productive interactions between the CEA the Mozambican state, and among CEA researchers, over their research interests, research priorities and primary political loyalties.