'Bones in the wrong soil': reburial, belonging, and disinterred cosmologies in post-conflict northern Uganda

In the aftermath of the war in northern Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government, most of the internally displaced have returned to pre-displacement areas of residence. As efforts to remake homes and reorder lives take centre stage, reburials from sites of displaceme...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Critical African studies 2015-06, Vol.7 (2), p.182-201
Main Authors: Jahn, Ina Rehema, Wilhelm-Solomon, Matthew
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Burial customs
Cosmology
Displacement
Ethnographies
Material culture
Politics-Africa
Postwar Reconstruction
Refugees
Religion
Sociology and Anthropology
Territorial issues
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Summary:In the aftermath of the war in northern Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government, most of the internally displaced have returned to pre-displacement areas of residence. As efforts to remake homes and reorder lives take centre stage, reburials from sites of displacement to former homesteads have become a widespread practice. Based on an ethnographic study in the formerly largest internal displacement camp in Acholiland, northern Uganda, we argue that the importance of reburial is twofold: first, it stems from a cosmological idiom in which, while in constant flux, belonging is spiritually embedded and territorially circumscribed; and second, the practice of reburial becomes implicated in post-conflict agendas of development and 'reconstruction' with pronounced material and cosmological consequences. Yet, contemporary debates in refugee studies have failed to grasp the importance of cosmological concerns and the ways these are bound up with questions of territoriality in post-displacement societies. It is therefore theoretically important to shift the contours of debate around post-conflict return and reconstruction from a focus on the critique of fluidity of social identities - or alternately emphasizing livelihoods and material 'reconstruction' - to an interrogation of the myriad ways in which place is made meaningful through ritual action invoking the material and the non-material alike, while at the same time being attentive to how the politics and materiality of post-conflict developmentalism continually shape, intersect with, and disrupt cosmological practice. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:2168-1392
2040-7211