Military Lives and Livelihoods – Morality, Gender and Militarization in northern Uganda

Project Type:

Smaller projects: PhD

project summary

The project is an investigation into the lives, futures, and military livelihood strategies of a generation of war-affected youth in Acholiland on the Uganda/Sudan border. Due to ongoing peace talks in the wake of 20-year long conflict between the Ugandan government and the rebel movement LRA, the transitional period opens up for new possibilities for the young generation in terms of livelihood options and future life chances, at the same time as it challenges people to redefine and negotiate the notions of 'home', 'peace' and 'security'. One aim of this project is to investigate how these notions are perceived and constructed at different levels, and how especially how the youth come to orient themselves not only within frameworks of 'home' and 'peace', but - as suggested by a continued (re)mobilisation of youth into both the national army and the rebel movement - also against them. Focusing of constructions of morality, gender and identity within settings where military lives and livelihoods come to provide paths to social becoming and social recogntion, the study sets out to explore: What underlying processes inform the military mobilisation of young men and women in Acholiland? And how do structural contexts of war, peace, and insecurity in different ways (trans)form and set the shifting moral terrains for identity formations, livelihood strategies, and codes for moral agency? Policy makers and the media are paying paramount attention to the committed violence in northern Uganda in pathological and psychological terms. Little attention has been paid to the social and structural motivations behind the violence, and to those group perpetrating and potentially legitimising it. This study aims to address this void in order to be able to understand violent livelihood strategies and recruitment from the perspective of those who have been living both of the war and for the war, and for whom the reasons to let go of a war-time lifestyle when peace breaks out in Acholiland may not be as obvious as often assumed. The study thus contributes to an analysis of why the violence persists in northern Uganda, and how it becomes legitimised despite (and perhaps as a consequence of) the ongoing political peace process.

Facts

PERIOD: 31 August 2008 to 30 August 2013
PROJECT CODE: 48-08-KU
COUNTRIES: Uganda
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Cecilie Lanken Verma
TOTAL GRANT: 2,146,713 DKK

Institutions