In post-conflict Mozambique, traditional healers represent alternative state-building emerging from below considering that healers are local actors performing multiple roles comprising the Mozambican judicial system, politics, health and spirituality. In this scenario, I argue that traditional healers are keen to be incorporated into the state via AMETRAMO (Association of Mozambican Traditional Healers), and this paper aims to understand how the ambiguous relationship between the state and traditional healers take place. In order to address this issue, this paper draws on critical understandings of liberal state-building through hybridity and on empirical material gathered through fieldwork. I conducted fieldwork in Mozambique from October 2016 to December 2016 in the provinces of Maputo, Inhambane and Sofala, where I interviewed traditional healers, religious leaders, local chiefs (regulos), local judges, members of civil society organizations and civil servants.
My research represents a critical approach to liberal peacebuilding through hybridity in International Relations. The recognition of local needs emerges as a more critical version and praxis of liberal peace-building and state-building in IR, moving away from a hierarchical international system and highlighting the political importance of everyday issues and local forms of representative institutions of statehood, which are often connected to resistance and traditions.