“A Reason Not to Belong”: Political Decentralization, Intercommunal Relations, and Changing Identities in Northeastern Uganda
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Date
2022-11-22
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Published online by Cambridge University Press
Abstract
Abim district, located in Uganda’s Karamoja region, is one of the scores of
new administrative units created under the country’s decentralization policy. The
establishment of Abim district in 2006, following decades of conflict in northern
Uganda, was accompanied by changes in ethnic identity within local communities
of Ethur farmers. Based on oral history fieldwork in Abim, Meyerson documents these
changes in sociopolitical identification among the Ethur. In doing so, he demonstrates how political decentralization has become a venue for the combination of
international discourses of indigenous rights, national notions of ethnic citizenship,
and grassroots histories of intercommunal relations.
Description
Keywords
Uganda; Karamoja; decentralization; conflict; identity; Ethur; ethnicity; indigeneity
Citation
Meyerson, Samuel. '“A Reason Not to Belong”: Political Decentralization, Intercommunal Relations, and Changing Identities in Northeastern Uganda', African Studies Review, (2022), pp. 1-23.