Research Team

Alexandra Dias, Gabriel Mithá Ribeiro, Helder Jauana, José Gonçalves, Vítor Alexandre Lourenço

Keywords

social actors, state, local political power, politics

Abstract

The study aims to analyse, in a comparative perspective, the participation of local social actors in rural communities; focusing on the structure of political sphere and the articulation of national political actors, the State and political parties.

The Project will produce two complementary scientific products: a final conference, with the presence of the investigation team and international scholars, a book and several articles to be published on scientific magazines. Overall, the study will produce two PhD dissertations.
The local rural communities and the researchers are as follows: Fernando Florêncio, in Bailundo, Angola; José Gonçalves, in the “munícipios” of Kuanhama e Namacunde, southwest of Angola; Alexandra Magnólia Dias, in the Tigray’s region, Ethiopia; Gabriel Mithá Ribeiro, in Borama’s area, in the Province of Tete, Mozambique; Victor Alexandre Lourenço, in the region of Ashanti, Ghana; Hélder Jauana, in the “distrito” of Matola, Mozambique.

The project will be implemented in three different but complementary phases: a) research and theoretical discussion among the researchers about the main concepts and theory approaches that will shape the methodology and theoretical framework used by the research team; b) field work in order to get direct empirical data; c) rewriting the theoretical approach in a comparative perspective, using the results from the field work in the writing process.
The study will benefit from the knowledge obtained through extensive field work on rural communities scarcely studied until the present, giving special attention to the continuity, contrast and disruption of social political dynamics.