The proposed research will examine the relationship between cultural conceptions of illness and gender-power relations in a historical context of violence and social destabilization in Mutarara District, north-central Mozambique. Drawing on the anthropological literature on illness, gender relations, and violence, this study will analyze the role of violence and social destabilization in the transformation of local idioms of illness and the reconfiguration of gender and power relations. This research will also examine health as a site of struggle for control between men and women, and between male-dominated hierarchical social structures and "the state". Using a multi-pronged methodological approach, this study will derive local explanations of the interrelationship between gender relations and illness conceptions among a population of recently repatriated refugees and displaced persons.