41. Working with Culture on the Peripheries of Idi Amin’s Uganda
- Author:
- Derek Peterson
- Publication Date:
- 09-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper is about the prosaic work that it took to constitute sites of memory in Idi Amin’s Uganda. Why, at a time when government and economy were so dysfunctional, at a time when tens of thousands of people were killed by the malevolent agents of state security, did earnest and high-minded men and women invest themselves in the project of cultural recovery? This paper focuses on an obscure bureaucrat, a man named John Tumusiime, who from 1972 to 1976 was the ‘Culture Officer’ of Kigezi, the southernmost district in Uganda. Men like Tumusiime thought themselves on the front lines of a globally consequential effort to revivify African culture. Even in the face of tremendous logistical difficulties, their commitment and ingenuity led them to seek out venues where the lessons of the past could be concretized, hard-coded in the collective lives of their people.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Uganda