■ Laitin, David D., 2007. Nations, States, and Violence. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. xv + 162 pp. ISBN 9780199228232

This is an ethnographic account of the warscape of Mozambique, based on the author’s long-term fieldwork experiences in Machaze District and the provincial capital of Chimoio, and among Machazian migrants in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Wartime mobility is a key topic of this book, as it questions the concept of ‘displacement’. The author argues that wartime social existence should be investigated within a much broader framework than that of ‘coping with violence’. The ‘anthropological gaze’ in the study of war should be refocused from violence to the social condition in war, and the ‘struggle for the social imagination’, discarding simplistic categories of ‘refugee’, ‘victim’ and ‘combatant’ or ‘perpetrator’. This allows us to catch glimpses of people struggling with life projects in complex and changing social conditions and to make sense of the subjective, socially constructed and culturally framed meanings of diverse violent practices. More importantly, we should not take for granted that the social condition of war is primarily about violence (or its presence or absence). As the book illustrates, it is as much about social transformation, new dilemmas and opportunities, struggles over legitimacy and power, and the negotiation of life strategies. In providing a detailed analysis of the ‘micro-politics’ of wartime social processes in Mozambique, this book also represents a new approach to the anthropology of war, which should be of interest to anyone working on violent conflict, displacement and migration. Åshild Kolås