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The State as Raider Among the Karamojong: ‘Where There are no Guns, They use the Threat of Guns’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Ben Knighton
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Abstract

The article brings together archival material, past ethnography, and memory on the one hand, and up-to-date eye-witness and newspaper reports on the other, to set current traumatic events in the very long view. The presentism of contemporary developmental and research approaches has precluded such perspectives. Thus the current disarmament programme being forced on the Karamojong of north-east Uganda by the Uganda People's Defence Force is no more unprecedented than the armed conflicts it is intended to resolve. The advent of colonial administration and memories of it are examined to illuminate the constraints of the present exercise. Events are not occurring solely in a local context, still less just on the national scene, but in the global context directed by world power. Thus the significance of cattle-raiding, the nature of which has not been drastically changed by firearms, has been exaggerated as part of a threat to world peace that must be tackled by international action. This has provided the rationale for repeating the brutality of the small wars of imperialism on a larger scale and with less prospect of an ensuing peace. The article proposes a rediscovery of African agency in Karamojong religious ceremonies that are not controlled by world orders.

Résumé

L'article rassemble d'unne part du matériel d'archives, des données ethnographiques anciennes et la mémoire, et d'autre part des informations récentes parues dans la presse et recueillies auprès de témoins oculaires, pour situer des événements traumatiques actuels dans une perspective à très long terme. Le présentisme des approches contemporaines en matière de développement et de recherche empêche une telle perspective. Ainsi, le programme actuel de désarmement imposé aux Karamajong du Nord-Est de l'Ouganda par les Forces de défense populaire de l'Ouganda (UPDF) n'a pas moins de précédents que les conflits armés qu'il entend résoudre. L'arrivée de l'administration coloniale et les souvenirs de celle-ci sont examinés pour éclairer les difficultiés du programme actuel. Les événements ne surviennent pas exclusivement dans un contexte local, et encore moins sur la seule scène nationale, mais dans un contexte mondial dirigé par des puissances mondiales. Ainsi l'importance du problème des vols de bétail, dont la nature n'a pas été exagérée dans le cadre de la menace de la paix mondiale à laquelle doit répondre une action internationale. C'est ce qui a servi à une plus grande échelle et avec moins d'espoirs de paix. L'article propose de redécouvrir l'organisation africaine dans les cérémonies religieuses karamojong non contrôlées par des ordres mondiaux.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , August 2003 , pp. 427 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2003

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