Publications

The GENESIS of this book can be traced back to 2012 when I was taking a course in the major debate on the study of Africa at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR). Anchored on the state and political subject formation on the continent, the course covers thematic issues such as the state and state formation, slavery, colonialism, nationalism, and development. Reading interdisciplinary literature, we raised critical questions. Getting the question right was the holy grail of the scholarship of political knowledge at the MISR.

Abstract

This book examines the historical, political, religious, and social dynamics of Muslim minority status in Uganda, and important themes of pre- and post-colonial political community, religion and national identity. 

In their recent volume, Understanding Global Migration, James F . Hollifield and Neil Foley observe that the concept of a “migration state” is an ideal type, reflecting a range of ways in which states grapple with migration. In its original formulation, it referred to the liberal democratic state with policies oriented towards markets and rights.

How should one read political and historical literature on modern authoritarianism, neopatrimonialism, and state formation in Africa from a Ugandan vantage point? This is the central theoretical question that Rebecca Tapscott asks in this new study on the postcolonial state in Uganda. In eight chapters, Tapscott navigates the ‘micro-dynamics of governance in Uganda’, in which she identifies a variety of modern authoritarianism thought to be peculiar to Museveni's Uganda: ‘institutionalized arbitrariness’.

Introduction to this Issue

Beyond the Secular: Jacques Derrida and the Theological-Political Complex investigates the contemporary relationship between religion and politics through a critical reading of Jacques Derrida’s political thought. Its central claim is that Derrida’s thought offers powerful resources to rethink such a relationship beyond the secular paradigm.

The idea and relevance of Compulsory Land Acquisition are central to the claims of many modern states world over. But how should we think of this practice in a post-colonial neoliberal context? This is the question at the heart of the theoretical criticisms and debates regarding Uganda’s Compulsory Land Acquisition Programme. In this debate, the government claims, and affirms, that a law on Compulsory Land Acquisition is needed because the government requires ‘land for development’.

Abstract This study contributes to the understanding of ethnicity in local government politics in Uganda. The idea here is to explain how ethnic patriotism was possible under the circumstances in which the colonial mode of governance rigidly recognized only one official identity of the Batoro in Toro. In comparison, the study demonstrates how the response from the colonized in Kigezi set parameters outside the indirect rule politics partly because the colonial mode of governance there was flexible in as far as it recognized the multi-ethnic identity of Kigezi.

Books reviewed in this issue include Renewing Workers’ Education: a radical vision (2020); A Short History of Modern Angola (2019); Decolonization in Universities: the politics of knowledge (2019); and The Political Economy of Government Subsidized Housing in South Africa (2020).