Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986-2006

This book will engage, engross and enrage; it aims to drive analysis and policy makers to rethink their approaches to such conflicts. · ChoiceWhile the monograph is not merely an academic endeavor to be read by students and researchers, it is certainly a rigorous scholarly work. The incisive argument about social torture supported by a wealth of factual detail and first-hand reports make this book a singularly important contribution to the study of conflict, aid, and oppression in Africa. · H-AfricaAs Director of the Refugee Law Project at the University of Makerere, Kampala, Uganda, Dolan offers a behind-the-scenes, cross-disciplinary study of one of Africa¹s longest running and most intractable conflicts. This book shows how, alongside the activities of the Lord¹s Resistance Army, government decisions and actions on the ground, consolidated by humanitarian interventions and silences, played a central role in creating a massive yet only very belatedly recognized humanitarian crisis. Not only individuals, but society as a whole, came to exhibit symptoms typical of torture, and the perpetrator-victim dichotomy became blurred. It is such phenomena, and the complex of social, political, economic and cultural dynamics which underpin them, which the author describes as social torture. Building on political economy, social anthropology, discourse analysis, international relations and psychoanalytic approaches to violence, this book offers an important analytical instrument for all those seeking entry points through which to address entrenched conflicts, whether from a conflict resolution, postconflict recovery or transitional justice perspective.