“A Reason Not to Belong”: Political Decentralization, Intercommunal Relations, and Changing Identities in Northeastern Uganda

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.