This paper presents ethnographic evidence from three sites across the Uganda/South Sudan borderlands. At each location, procedures to identify alleged poisoners were documented. Novel voting processes were initiated by hybrid local authorities. Addressing widespread anxiety about proximate wrong-doing seemed to promote order locally. In this paper, we discuss similarities between locations and review what constitutes poison. Descriptions of indigenous electoral processes are then provided. We reveal the contested nature of accountability, responsibility and democracy at…
Entries by Elizabeth Storer
The scale and complexity of the current crisis in South Sudan challenges description. The advocacy of journalists and non-governmental organisations – whilst generally based on good intentions – often relies on statistical descriptors, explanations of ‘inter-ethnic violence’, and impersonal stories of victimhood which serve to flatten this heterogeneous emergency. In short, many of these current accounts actually tell us little about the many ways in which new South Sudanese refugees are striving to live in…