Paper short abstract:

Following the tentative end of hostilities within northern Uganda in 2006 and gradual return of the Acholi population after mass displacement, this paper examines how a “new normal” in post-war romances is evolving through three main concepts: movement, performance and material exchanges.

Paper long abstract:

During the two-decades long war (1986-2006) over 90% of the Acholi population in northern Uganda were moved, often forcibly, into overcrowded camps for internally displaced people. In Acholi life privacy is generally very limited, while public accountability is valued. In the camp private space shrunk even further and public accountability was undermined by anonymity. These experiences entailed profound disruptions to "normal" Acholi orderings of life. Yet in in the post-war period, perhaps surprisingly, there are evident continuities alongside discontinuities and transformations to the norms surrounding relationships between men and women.

Building on over seven years of ethnographic work in northern Uganda, this paper examines the roles of imagination and performance, intimacy, and social belonging as a "new normal" in post-war romances is evolving. It does this through three main concepts: movement, performance and material exchanges.

The processual nature of relationships is well documented in Africanist anthropology. This paper proposes that in the aftermath of war Acholi relationships might be better characterized by movements — movements that are fluid, not necessarily sequential or with a pre-determined trajectory. This paper examines "movements" in relationships between public and private spaces against the backdrop of wider societal movements from the moral spaces of camp to home.

Further it argues that relationships between men and women are negotiated through and beyond embodied practices in these spaces in ways that are not always spoken. Rather, love and intimacy are reimagined through performance (such as dance) and through negotiation (often in the forms of material exchanges).