After Rape Porter, Holly
12/2016, Letnik:
v.Series Number 53
eBook
Following the ICC intervention in 2005, northern Uganda has been at the heart of international justice debates. The emergent controversy, however, missed crucial aspects of Acholi realities: that the ...primary moral imperative in the wake of wrongdoing was not punishment but, instead, the restoration of social harmony. Drawing upon abundant fieldwork and in-depth interviews with almost 200 women, Holly Porter examines issues surrounding wrongdoing and justice, and sexual violence and rape, among the Acholi people in northern Uganda. This intricate exploration offers evidence of a more complicated and nuanced explanation of rape and its aftermath, suggesting a re-imagining of the meanings of post-atrocity justice, whilst acknowledging the role of sex, power and politics in all sexual experiences between coercion and consent. With its wide investigation of social life in northern Uganda, this provocative study offers vital analysis for those interested in sexual and gender violence, post-conflict reconstruction and human rights.
This article explores responses to rape in northern Uganda. The continuum of violence that women experience, before, during and after war is well noted, yet how this relates to exceptional approaches ...of transitional justice is underexplored. Based on three years of participant observation and in-depth interviews with a random sample of 187 women from two Acholi villages, this article focuses on a comparison between rapes perpetrated by combatants and civilians, both of which followed abductions that were intended to result in “marriage.” The comparison illustrates how experiences of rape do not fit neatly into “war” and “ordinary” categories, and rather suggests that a more useful way of conceptualizing women’'s experiences comes from understanding how particular circumstances of rape shape the social harm she suffers. It shows how experiences of rape and the harm it causes are predicated on understandings of wrongdoing related to challenges posed to social harmony.
Highlights • IRS1 and pSTAT6 are highly expressed in ductal carcinoma in situ. • IRS2 expression correlates with increasing grade of invasive ductal carcinoma. • MCF7 cells are more sensitive to ...taxol-induced death than MDA-MB-231 cells. • Decreasing IRS1 de-sensitizes MCF7 cells to several chemotherapeutic agents. • Decreasing IRS1 in MCF7 cells decreases ERalpha expression levels.
ABSTRACT
When it comes to rape in war, evocative language describing rape as a ‘weapon of war’ has become commonplace. Although politically important, overemphasis on strategic aspects of wartime ...sexual violence can be misleading. Alternative explanations tend to understand rape either as exceptional — a departure from ‘normal’ sexual relationships — or as part of a continuum of gendered violence. This article shows how, even in war, norms are not suspended; nor do they simply continue. War changes the moral landscape. Drawing on ethnographic research over 10 years in northern Uganda, this article argues for a re‐sexualization of understandings of rape. It posits that sexual mores are central to explaining sexual violence, and that sexual norms — and hence transgressions — vary depending on the moral spaces in which they occur. In Acholi, moral spaces have temporal dimensions (‘olden times’, the ‘time of fighting’ and ‘these days’) and associated spatial dimensions (home, camp, bush, village, town). The dynamics of each help to explain the occurrence of some forms of sexual violence and the rarity of others. By reflecting on sexual norms and transgressions in these moral spaces, the article sheds light on the relationship between ‘event’ and ‘ordinary’, rape and war.
This article reflects on why so many women never access justice or take advantage of available services after rape in northern Uganda. It focuses on roles of three prominent non-governmental actors: ...lineage-based kinship authority, churches, and non-governmental organisations examining the parts they played after 94 instances of rape in this study and more broadly, how they have shaped notions of rape and appropriate responses to it. Evidence from this study (participant observation over three years and 187 in-depth interviews) suggests that although non-governmental organizations and churches have impacted evolution of social norms, reactions to wrongdoing are primarily decided by extended family structures, and are subject to a primary value of social harmony.
In the Acholi sub-region of Uganda, historically and geographically peripheral since the colonial era and the epicenter of over 20 years of war - there is a peculiar manifestation of what appear to ...be contradictory phenomena: brutally violent retribution and extraordinary forgiveness. This article suggests that both responses to wrongdoing are motivated by the same supremely important value of social harmony.
The article focuses on one crime, rape, and examines what justice means for Acholi women in the vacuum of justice created by the decayed state of former local methods of responding to wrongdoing and the still inadequate role and legitimacy of Uganda's judicial system and the International Criminal Court. The research indicates that notions of appropriate punishment are oriented by the degree to which the perpetrator is seen as important to future social harmony. The various responses to rape are a product of dynamics in the justice gap, and, I want to suggest, are illustrative of responses to crime or wrongdoing more generally.
The article highlights the centrality of two integral aspects of lived Acholi reality: there is a profound value of social harmony, and a deep distrust of higher authorities to dispense justice in their interest. Women's experiences after rape in this study underscore the importance of an arbiter of injustice that has earned moral jurisdiction on a local level. When authority is recognized and trusted, parties typically accept the outcome of arbitration, restoring broken social harmony. However, without moral jurisdiction, outcomes of such processes are viewed with suspicion and usually exacerbate existing tensions.
Abstract
The processual nature of affinal relationships is well established in Africanist anthropology. This article calls for greater attention to spatial considerations and proposes the concept of ...movement as an integral dimension of understanding affinal relationships. This observation springs from reflections on how the experiences of displacement and return in northern Uganda have reshaped constructions of ‘home’ in relation to love and intimate relationships. Reflecting on ethnographic research over ten years in northern Uganda where a two-decade-long war (1986–2006) occurred, the article examines movements in relationships between public and private spaces against the backdrop of wider societal movements from the spatial moral geography of camp to home. It reflects on how the spatial dynamics of camps entailed profound disruptions to ‘normal’ gendered orderings of life and how ‘home’ is being reconfigured in the aftermath of war.
Abstract
It’s time for a philosophical shift, says Holly Porter, BCS Membership Director, as she explores how and why BCS membership grades are evolving.
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