Full Description
In this highly original book, Obert Bernard Mlambo offers a comparative and critical examination of the relationship between military veterans and land expropriation in the client-army of the first-century BC Roman Republic and veterans of the Zimbabwean liberation war. The study centres on the body of the soldier, the cultural production of images and representations of gender which advance theoretical discussions around war, masculinity and violence. Mlambo employs a transcultural comparative approach based on a persistent factor found in both societies: land expropriation. Often articulated in a framework of patriarchy, land appropriation takes place in the context of war-shaped masculinities.
This book fosters a deeper understanding of social processes, adding an important new perspective to the study of military violence, and paying attention to veterans' claims for rewards and compensation. These claims are developed in the context of war and its direct consequences, namely expropriation, confiscation and violence. Land Expropriation in Ancient Rome and Contemporary Zimbabwe contributes to current efforts to decolonise knowledge construction by revealing that a non-Western perspective can broaden our understanding of veterans, war, violence, land and gender in classical culture.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword by David Konstan (New York University, USA)
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Ancient Rome and Africa: Background and Differences
2. Land Ownership, Masculinity and War
3. Warfare-Madness, Violence and Expropriation
4. Veterans and the Prize of Valour: Masculinity and the Homosocial Strategy
5. Veterans, Masculinity and the Politics of the Body
6. Veterans and 'Spatial Masculinities'
7. Concluding Remarks
Notes
Bibliography
Index
