This Land Is Not For Sale

Although violent conflict has declined in northern Uganda, tensions and mistrust concerning land have increased. Residents try to deal with acquisitions by investors and exclusions from forests and wildlife reserves. Land wrangles among neighbours and relatives are widespread. The growing commodification of land challenges ideals of entrustment for future generations. Using extended case studies, collaborating researchers analyze the principles and practices that shape access to land. Contributors examine the multiplicity of land claims, the nature of transactions and the management of conflicts. They show how access to land is governed through intimate relations of gender, generation and belonging.

Lotte Meinert is Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University. She has carried out research in Uganda since 1993 and led research capacity projects in Northern Uganda for 15 years. Her publications include Time Work: Studies of Temporal Agency Biosocial Worlds (Berghahn, 2020) and Configuring Contagion: Ethnographies of Biosocial Epidemics (Berghahn, 2021).

Susan Reynolds Whyte is Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, and has researched in East Africa on social efforts to secure well-being in the face of poverty, disease, conflict, and rapid change. Her publications deal with the management of misfortune, legacies of violence, and transformations in relations of gender and generations.

“This wonderful book makes an important contribution to the study of African land and rural communities on a number of levels. There is a remarkable richness and diversity of empirical material, largely collected and described by researchers and writers from the region.” • Julian Hopwood, London School of Economics