Abstract

GRANJO, Paulo. Determination and chaos according to Mozambican divination. Etnográfica [online]. 2007, vol.11, n.1, pp.7-28. ISSN 0873-6561.

Although it is often assumed that the southern African systems of misfortune interpretation are deterministic, the notion of deterministic chaos seems to be more accurate to understand underlying principles of the Mozambican divination with tinhlolo. That system is based on a deterministic structure, it seeks to explain and to regulate the uncertainty, but its outcome is chaotic due to the complexity of the factors involved, unknowable in their totality and characterised by agency. To understand it as a domestication of aleatory system legitimates new comparison fields worldwide (including with the probabilistic notion of "risk"), and refocuses the study of Ngoma-like phenomena, from their reproduction mechanisms as affliction cults to their underlying logics and world visions.

Keywords : divination; tinhlolo; deterministic chaos; risk; uncertainty; Mozambique.

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