CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 30War, Law, and JusticeAfrican history and culture studiesAfrican Studies and Ethnography

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Dirty things: spiritual pollution and life after the Lord’s Resistance Army

Victor, Letha, Porter, Holly·2017·Journal of Eastern African Studies
DOI 10.1080/17531055.2017.1373441
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

In post-war northern Uganda (as elsewhere), the reintegration of ex-combatants into their home communities is an ongoing process that involves long-term social and spiritual labour. The “re” of “reintegration,” however, might falsely assume a static and cohesive Acholi cosmology within which the parameters of such labours are clearly defined. Pathways taken with the goal of lessening suffering caused by war are tread by Acholi civilians and ex-combatants alike, and the ways former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters attempt to alleviate spiritual distress illuminate wider struggles for moral authority in everyday life. These practices are embedded in cosmologies which, though predating the 20 years of violent upheaval that ended in 2006, are sites of contestation where the politics of belief and doubt are played out. Drawing on insights gleaned from ethnographic fieldwork over the last decade, we focus here on targeted research from January to August 2014 with former LRA individuals who were part of a bigger study of clients at an ex-combatant reception centre. We explore how these persons have experienced, described, and responded to the suffering caused by ajwani (“dirty things”) – the stuff of a polluted cosmos. We further discuss the politics of “belief” and doubt in contemporary Acholi. The labour of ex-combatants and their communities to alleviate spiritual suffering demonstrates how ritual practices both challenge and uphold the power of moral authorities. In the wid…

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/17531055.2017.1373441

Cites

1 of 1 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 1 references

Research works printed but not linked: 38

  1. 10.1097/WTF.0b013e3283625d3c · DOI
  2. 10.1097/WTF.0b013e3280121c00 · DOI
  3. Allen Tim., 2010, The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality, 242, 10.5040/9781350223240 · DOI
  4. Allen Tim, 2006, A Hard Homecoming: Lessons Learned from the Reception Center Process in Northern Uganda
  5. Annan Jeannie, 2008, The State of Female Youth in Northern Uganda: Findings from the Survey of War-Affected Youth (SWAY) Phase II
  6. Annan Jeannie, 2006, The State of Youth and Youth Protection in Northern Uganda: Findings from the Survey for War Affected Youth
  7. Antze Paul, 1996, Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory
  8. Asad Talal., 1993, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, 10.1353/book.16014 · DOI · Paper page
  9. 10.1093/ijtj/ijm007 · DOI
  10. Baines Erin., 2005, Roco Wat I Acoli. Restoring Relationships in Acholi-Land: Traditional Approaches to Justice and Reconciliation
  11. 10.1093/afraf/adq023 · DOI · Paper page
  12. 10.1093/jrs/feu001 · DOI
  13. 10.1093/jhuman/hur015 · DOI
  14. Behrend Heike., 1999, Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1985–97, 10.2307/j.ctv136c09s · DOI
  15. 10.1177/1363461509105815 · DOI
  16. 10.1080/17502970801988057 · DOI
  17. Bubandt Nils., 2014, The Empty Seashell: Witchcraft and Doubt on an Indonesian Island
  18. Carlson Khristopher, 2008, Forced Marriage Within the Lord’s Resistance Army, Uganda
  19. Crazzolara Joseph Pasquale., 1938, A Study of the Acooli Language: Grammar and Vocabulary
  20. van Dijk Rijk., 1998, Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power, 155
  21. Dolan Chris., 2009, Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986–2006, 10.3167/9781845455651 · DOI
  22. 10.3366/afr.2010.0201 · DOI
  23. Evans-Pritchard Edward Evan., 1982, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande
  24. Fassin Didier, 2009, The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood
  25. 10.1177/0308275X0102100304 · DOI
  26. 10.1215/9780822388791 · DOI
  27. Jackson Michael., 1996, Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology, 10.2979/5260.0 · DOI · Paper page
  28. Leys Ruth., 2010, Trauma: A Genealogy
  29. Meyer Birgit., 1998, Journal of Religion in Africa, 28, 316
  30. Middleton John., 1999, Lugbara Religion: Ritual and Authority among an East African People
  31. 10.3366/afr.2002.72.3.420 · DOI · Paper page
  32. Needham Rodney., 1972, Belief, Language, and Experience
  33. p’Bitek Okot., 1971, Religion of the Central Luo.
  34. Pham Phuong, 2007, Abducted: The Lord’s Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda
  35. 10.1016/j.wsif.2014.11.005 · DOI
  36. Pouillon Jean., 1982, Between Belief and Transgression: Structuralist Essays in Religion, History and Myth, 9
  37. 10.1525/can.2007.22.1.66 · DOI
  38. 10.1515/9781400821938 · DOI

Cited by

See all 30

Metadata

Authors
Victor, L., & Porter, H.
Affiliations
  • University of Toronto (CA)
  • London School of Economics and Political Science (GB)
Corresponding author
Victor, Letha
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Eastern African Studies
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2017-09-13
Volume
11
Issue
4
Pages
590-608
ISSN
  • 1753-1055 (ISSN-L)
  • 1753-1063
DOI
10.1080/17531055.2017.1373441
OpenAlex
W2754330844
Cited by
30
References
1
Citations by year
2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 6
FWCI
13.30
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Journal of Eastern African Studies (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Justice and Security Research Programme (PO5729)
  • Richard F. Salisbury Award (Canadian Anthropology Society)
  • Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (8874)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › War, Law, and Justice
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › African history and culture studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › African Studies and Ethnography
Keywords
Acholi, Lord's Resistance Army, ex-combatant reintegration, spiritual pollution, ritual, moral authority, belief and doubt, ritual legitimacy, Northern Uganda, war trauma

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Dirty things: spiritual pollution and life after the Lord’s Resistance Army. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/17531055.2017.1373441
The paper
Victor, L., & Porter, H. (2017). Dirty things: spiritual pollution and life after the Lord’s Resistance Army. Journal of Eastern African Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2017.1373441