The intimate governance of land in Northern Uganda

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.