Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda, 1890 to 1979 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda, 1979 to 2016
Springer eBooks, 2017
This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions to and negotiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a particular emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to refute the hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in origin, spreading out to encompass the globe over the last several decades. Indeed, rather than reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the series instead looks to receive and respond to changing perspectives on an important but inherently nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space in which multiple modernities can interact, overlap, and conflict. While privileging works that emphasize historical change over time, the series will also feature scholarship that blurs the lines between the historical and the contemporary, recognizing the ways in which our changing understandings of modernity in the present have the capacity to affect the way we think about African and global histories. Editorial Board Aderonke Adesanya, Art History, James
Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology 7(1):20–34, 2015
In recent debates between social scientists and human rights and legal scholars, many anthropologists have argued that the successes or failures of transitional justice mechanisms to contribute to peace depend on a wide range of contextually situated historical, political, socio-economic, and cultural factors (see Hinton 2010). Human rights organizations often disregard or sideline such contextual specifics and favor a narrow definition of justice in terms of the unwavering punitive orthodoxy of international courts as the primary solution to conflict. Looking through an anthropological lens in this paper, I focus on the history of politics in post-colonial Uganda in order to render clearer the cycle of violence that emerged as a prominent feature of the political landscape of the region. Against this contextualized backdrop, I investigate the case of conflict between the Ugandan state and the Lord’s Resistance Army, and problematize the role of one international human rights organization, the International Criminal Court. I argue that by continuing its intervention in Uganda’s justice matters, the ICC is inadvertently granting the same kind of amnesty to past atrocities that it so condemns for present ones, and in doing so, grants international legitimacy to the current state while de-legitimizing non-state local forms of justice. Although ethnographic “field notes” are not included in the following pages, this essay represents one anthropologist’s analytical engagement with issues of justice in Uganda.
implied by what it means to be modern in the African instance and to explore different ways in which this dilemma can be resolved. The Africa implied is black Africa or what is also known as sub-Saharan Africa and by modernity I mean the worldview that has come about through forms of knowledge that arise from and are agreeable to human nature and has harboured a universal potential for freedom, for humanism, and ultimately, for progress. The paper will defend the claim that modernity in Africa is in a dilemma and will attempt to explain the root and nature of the dilemma. It will go forward to articulate the forms under which modernity in Africa will yield its desired dividend with the view that there is a need for what it calls "the African agency" (interpreted to mean constructing modernity in Africa with Africa's intellectual and cultural capital) through a fresh knowledge base for modernization to come through the cultural geography of African experience in line with the principles of freedom and rationality which are the cardinal principles of modernity.
Is it possible to make meaningful distinctions between “tradition” and “modernity” in Africa?
This essay explores the distinction between tradition and modernity in Africa by examining the evolution of conflict. The focus of the investigation is Sierra Leone, looking at two conflicts during and after the colonial era, the Hut Tax War (1898) and the Civil War (1991-2002). The fact that Sierra Leonean conflicts contained both traditional and modern elements is important both for academics studying African society, and for practitioners interested in alleviating conflict. For the former group, it shows that tradition and modernity are often more closely intertwined than we think, and that the form in which social facts appear may be very different from their origins—the crucial insight of ‘invented tradition’. The two are not irreversible static states, but rather dynamic processes comprised of disparate, potentially conflicting elements. For the latter group, it shows that African conflicts cannot be understood on the basis of Western conceptions of modernity alone. If we want to comprehend these wars in order to prevent them, we need to take into account not just traditional cultural differences, but also the divergent paths to modernity that African countries have followed since independence.
Hegemonic Regime Survival and Legitimation in Uganda: A Review Essay
2011
The Africa Review of Books presents a biannual review of works on Africa in the social sciences, humanities and creative arts. It is also intended to serve as a forum for critical analyses, reflections and debates about Africa. As such, the Review solicits book reviews, reviews of articles and essays that are in line with the above objectives. Contributions that traverse disciplinary boundaries and encourage interdisciplinary dialogue and debate are particularly welcome.
1970s Uganda Past, Present, Future.pdf
Journal of Asian and African Studies , 2017
This paper explores the ongoing presence of the 1972 expulsion of the racialized Asian population by former president Idi Amin in contemporary Uganda. The expulsion was a " critical event " and thus the paper uses an " anthropology of the event " approach to focus on the architecture of silence and historical consciousness of the event in urban Kampala. The four arenas of focus are: (1) official state narratives; (2) community mobilization and public forums on urban African-Asian relations; (3) memories, adventure tales, and narratives expressed by Ugandan Asian men; and (4) the infrastructure and material culture of 1970s Asian property expropriation.
Contemporary Issues in African Society
2018
This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions to and negotiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a particular emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to refute the hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in origin, spreading out to encompass the globe over the last several decades. Indeed, rather than reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the series instead looks to receive and respond to changing perspectives on an important but inherently nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space in which multiple modernities can interact, overlap, and conflict. While privileging works that emphasize historical change over time, the series will also feature scholarship that blurs the lines between the historical and the contemporary, recognizing the ways in which our changing understandings of modernity in the present have the capacity to affect the way we think about African and global histories.