| ID | 178008 |
| Title Proper | Figure of the abducted Acholi girl |
| Other Title Information | nation-building, gender, and children born into the LRA in Uganda |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Stewart, Beth W |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Based on analysis of newspapers and secondary sources, this article examines the gendered construction of the national imagery of the war between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in an effort to expand current conceptual understanding of the exclusion experienced by children born of forced marriage inside the LRA. Uganda developed as a militarised and masculine post-colony and yet nation-building for President Museveni involved crafting a national imagery that drew upon development discourses of gender and children to position himself as the benevolent father of the nation. Invoking Veena Das’ ‘figure of the abducted woman’, I argue that the Ugandan government mobilised the figure of the abducted Acholi girl to legitimise both its governance and the war. The article concludes that the resulting narrative provided no legitimate social or political space in the national imagery for the children of the abducted girls. |
| `In' analytical Note | Journal of Modern African Studies Vol. 58, No.4; Dec 2020: p.627 - 647 |
| Journal Source | Journal of Modern African Studies 2020-12 58, 4 |
| Key Words | Uganda ; Nation-Building ; Lord's Resistance Army ; Child Soldiers ; Wartime Sexual Violence ; Forced Marriage ; Militarised Masculinity ; Born of War |