This dissertation examines the politics and economics of the cultural performance of dance, placing this expressive form of communication within the context of historic changes in Mozambique, from the colonial encounter, to the liberation movement and the post-colonial socialist nation, to the neoliberalism of the present. The three dances examined here represent different regimes, contrasting forms of subjectivity, and very different relations of the individual to society. N’Tsay (1984) is a dance produced by the National Song and Dance Company (CNCD) about a female heroine; suggesting that the people of Mozambique will find a way to stand up to the violence and wretchedness of the present as they stood up to it in the past. Nyau is a traditional dance genre performed by the male Nyau secret society and designated UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. When performed in the context of national festivals nyau is about hinterland, renegade males calling on the spirits of the ancestors to assert power over both the rulers and the ruled. Augusto Cuvilas’ controversial choreographic work, Um Solo para Cinco (2004), contrasts with the ascendance of nyau in the 2000s. Cuvilas, trained in Mozambique, Cuba, and France, was the darling of the CNCD but eventually was rejected and reviled, and murdered in 2007. Um Solo para Cinco is a classic for Maputo art-goers and public intellectuals, but something better forgotten for public officials and religious leaders. Whereas masked male nyau dancers excite audiences with their performances of menace and disorder, the five female dancers in Um Solo para Cinco create anguish by revealing their naked bodies. The female dancers perform the disintegration of social life and their dispossession in the current era compared to the prowess of uncontainable male hinterland dancers. Um Solo para Cinco expresses another form of resistance, quieter but in many ways more powerful, another form of subjectivity that reveals the precariousness of everyday work and life. The dances are wonderful examples of body politics; they recall the system of Citizens and Subjects that was instituted through colonial rule and communicate Mozambicans experiences with this legacy in contemporary social life.

This dissertation, Conjuring Blight in an Urban Landscape: Market Farms and Aerosol Murals in Oakland, CA, examines collaborations between the City of Oakland and several nonprofits to cover key city functions in the face of a fiscal crisis precipitated by the national recession (2008-2011). Based in eighteen months of ethnographic research and years of additional interaction, my research shows the ways that bureaucrats, gardeners and aerosol muralists are all actively inscribing spaces and claiming ownership over them, through their actions and material interactions; this process of co-creation defines the legality, subjectivity, and economics of the people and institutions involved. This dissertation explores the public power of imagination in creating shared worlds and how the material effects of these imaginings co-constitute space. These transformations of space are driven by the need to transform people - the poor, the unhealthy, the disempowered - to encourage behaviors desired by the City and nonprofit organizations in their collaborations. Blight is a central metaphor used to create categories, effect imaginings, and produce certain types of space, with far-reaching effects on the lives lived within it.