Abstract
AbstractThe literature on Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) returnees in Acholiland, northern Uganda tells us that those who returned from the rebel group are likely to experience stigma and social exclusion. While the term is deployed frequently, ‘stigma’ is not a well-developed concept and most of the evidence we have comes from accounts of returnees themselves. Focusing instead on the ‘stigmatizers’, this article theorizes stigmatization as part of the ‘moral experience’ of regulating post-war social repair. Through interview-based and ethnographic methods, it finds that stigmatization of LRA returnees takes many forms and serves multiple functions, calling into question whether this catch-all term actually obscures more than it illuminates. While stigmatization is usually practised as a form of ‘social control’, its function can be ‘reintegrative’ rather than purely exclusionary. Through the northern Uganda case study, this article seeks to advance conceptual and empirical understanding of the manifestations and functions of stigmatization in spaces of return, challenging the logic underpinning those interventions that seek to reduce it.
Highlights
The literature on Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) returnees in Acholiland, northern Uganda tells us that those who returned from the rebel group are likely to experience stigma and social exclusion
Over 10 years since the end of the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU), numerous studies argue that those who have returned from the LRA, often having been forcibly abducted by the group, face severe and punishing forms of ‘stigmatization’ in the context of their daily lives.[1]
Adopting frameworks proposed by Kleinman and colleagues, the argument follows that stigmatization of LRA returnees is embedded in the ‘moral experience’ of post-war social suffering and repair
Summary
Over 10 years since the end of the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU), numerous studies argue that those who have returned from the LRA, often having been forcibly abducted by the group, face severe and punishing forms of ‘stigmatization’ in the context of their daily lives.[1]. Experience, here is understood ethnographically as ‘the felt flow of interpersonal communication and engagements’ that is ‘thoroughly intersubjective’ and takes place in a ‘local world’ that is culturally, socially, economically and politically specific (Kleinman 1998: 358) It is ‘moral’ because it refers to deliberation and contestations around ‘a set of social norms and obligations that constitute what is most important to people living in a particular community’ or ‘what matters most for ordinary men and women’ who have ‘important things to lose, to gain, and to preserve’ (Kleinman 1998: 362; Kleinman 2006; Yang et al 2007: 1528, emphasis added).[6] In contexts of social suffering, defined as ‘the trauma, pain and disorders to which atrocity gives rise’ that defy neat biomedical or legal categorization (Kleinman et al 1997: ix), a moral experience perspective on stigmatization takes us back to Goffman’s language of relationships allowing us to better understand: those doing the stigmatizing, for it allows us to see [them] as interpreting, living and reacting with regard to what is vitally at stake and what is most crucially threatened (Yang et al 2007: 1530, emphasis added). This argument is developed by examining the concept of stigma and stigmatization in the Acholi vernacular
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