Intellectual Legacies, Political Morality, and Disillusionment: Connections Between Two Mozambique Research Institutions, 1976–2017

Abstract

Abstract States and institutions often narrate their histories in one of two ways: underscoring continuity with the past or proclaiming rupture from it. This article studies the case of two research institutions in independent Mozambique to show that the history of rupture that some postsocialist political and academic actors claim has a more complex history. That history is related to other African independence struggles and newly independent states and is also embedded in the shape of postsocialist life. Focused on a brief period in time and on two research institutes, this article sheds light on wider processes in African history related to institution building, postcolonial universities and education, and the networks of the global 1960s, as well as those of socialist states during the Cold War.