ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the issue of postwar identity construction among children directly involved in armed conflict in Mozambique and Angola. It focuses on ethnographic material resulting from research carried out in Mozambique and Angola with war-affected children, particularly child soldiers. The chapter describes the problem of child soldiers within the context of the crisis of state politics of power, identity, and access to resources. It was precisely this crisis, which resulted from internal and external causes, that gave rise to political violence and armed conflicts into which children were drawn as soldiers. The chapter examines how postwar identities are negotiated and constructed through ritual performance in the particular contexts. Identities constructed through remembrance can be both "negative" and "positive". "Negative" identities are those from which the person wishes to escape and which originate in a past that he or she needs to control.
