After atrocity: community reconstruction in Northern Uganda

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the development of post-war social stability in northern Uganda. Relying on data from fieldwork and 91 in-depth interviews in three rural villages, I analyze what facilitates and what hinders the transitional process. I develop an analysis of how the war and displacement affected unity by bringing broad social changes and shifts to daily patterns of interactions. I consider how local catalysts of conflict emerge from the transitional period, potentially blocking the transition to stability and devolving communities into renewed cycles of violence and instability. I also analyze the role of formal transitional justice mechanisms in local communities, looking particularly at how social context affects the diffusion of global discourses of transitional justice to the local level. I develop a model of the post-war transition from fragile coexistence to social stability that integrates local informal processes, formal transitional justice mechanisms, and emergent conflicts.