Democracy, Morality and Imagination: the Importance of Elections in a Chewa Village in Rural Malawi

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The study will investigate the relationship between political identities and wider social imaginaries in a rural Chewa village in Malawi during the 2019general elections. After 30 years of dictatorship under Dr Hastings Banda, Malawi conducted its first multiparty elections in 1994. However, governmentpolicies have largely failed to improve the conditions of the majority of the population, and, after a series of corruption scandals, trust in politicians isvery low. Moreover, voting tends to be very regional with parties rarely gaining large support outside their regional bases. Yet participation in electionsremains very high, with close to 71% of eligilble voters participating in the 2014 elections. Taking a cue from recent anthropological reflections on thepolitical (Candea, 2011; Curtis and Spencer) and studies of elections (Spencer, 2007; Banerjee, 2014), as well as Harri Englund's (2006, 2011) workon liberalism and popular grievances in Malawi, the research will attempt to understand the importance of voting and democracy to members of achewa village. Paying particular attention to non-elite moral imaginaries and grievances, their relationship to political identity, and the mediums andsettings they are generated in. The study aims to contribute to the small but growing anthropology on democracy and elections. As well as exploringthemes of liberalism and the postcolonial state; South-Central African politics; media; moral narrative and ethics