The ‘Intimate Governance’ of Land in Northern Uganda
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Date
2022
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Publisher
Nordic Journal of African Studies
Abstract
After the war in northern Uganda, conflicts over land became pervasive. Families, clans, and
neighbours often relate through tensions and contradictions over customary land and how it is
governed. This article discusses the changing gendered dynamics of the governance of customary land amidst land conflicts in a post-war society. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic
fieldwork in Pader District in the Acholi sub-region, carried out between 2014 and 2016, the
paper highlights strategies used by different categories of women involved in land conflicts to
perform, communicate, and activate their belonging and attachment to land. Relating the notion
of property to how women (re-)position themselves in land conflicts and (re-)construct those
positions and their identities on and through land demonstrates how these conflicts in post-war
northern Ugandan offer women a way of grounding themselves on customary land. The article
therefore advances the notion of ‘intimate governance’ to understand, in particular, women’s
increasing role in land governance, suggesting that it is becoming (en-)gendered through land
conflicts.
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Keywords
access,, customary land,, intimate governance,, performing property,, women