Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda [Paperback]

"Riveting. Powerful. Evocative. Anthropology at its best. Sverker Finnstrom is a gifted researcher and writer: in his hands the Acoli become a lens for understanding very twenty-first-century forms of violence and survival. This is a book about one of the more destructive and bitter wars on the African continent and its global connections. But it is also a book about hope, about facing and overcoming crisesoof every culture being all cultures in the opus of experience, of mango trees surviving the tides of war and global ignorance. About sorrow and laughter and moments of coevalness in northern Uganda and beyond." Carolyn Nordstrom, author of Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World "Living with Bad Surroundings is a lucid, compelling, in-depth, and detailed exploration of the vexed position of youth in poverty-stricken Africa; a painstaking and authoritative account of one of the most refractory and long-running wars on that continent; and a demonstration of how imperative it is to complement historical and political-economic explanations of Africa's conflicts with ethnographic perspectives that encompass local symbolic reality, local readings of history and tradition, local expectations and desires, and local understandings of power, morality, and reconciliation." Michael Jackson, author of In Sierra Leone "Finnstrom describes the complexity of living in a war zone where there is neither social order nor safety and where even the idea of peace is problematic since it never lasts long enough to allow the construction of any dependable relations or resources...Finnstrom listened to what concerned the Acholi he met and that was the issue of survival itself, both as it related to the present and how it could relate to what future Acholi may expect in war-torn Uganda...It is a narrative of violence, flight, loss, resettlement, poverty, misunderstanding, distrust, and disbelief, as well as of hope and survival. Through all the chaos, Acholi have survived and struggled to construct a reality and identity that will help them...Finnstrom's picture of contemporary Acholi life is grim, as is his picture of what the future holds for them. Yet he portrays Acholi as tenacious survivors, remarkably resourceful in making use of past traditions as well as new means to manage their lives...it is a readable and absorbing report of a chaotic, difficult, and dangerous part of Africa...I am glad I read it. I recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the problematical side of Africa. It reads more like the writing of a good and thoughtful war correspondent rather than a traditional social scientist. It is what is useful and appropriate for understanding the world of contemporary northern Ugandans whom the author clearly liked and cared about." -T. O. Beidelman, Anthropos, The International Review of Anthropology and Linguistics, 2009 "Living with Bad Surroundings ... [is] a very good book, perhaps the best written on northern Uganda since the 1970s. It will be an ideal text for courses dealing with Africa and the local realities of modern armed conflicts." - TLS, 26th March 2010 " ... a moving, intimate account of everyday life... a heartbreaking portrait" American Ethnologist

Since 1986, the Acholi people of northern Uganda have lived in the crossfire of a violent civil war, with the Lord's Resistance Army and other groups fighting the Ugandan government. Acholi have been murdered, maimed, and forced into displacement. Thousands of children have been abducted and forced into fighting. Many observers have perceived Acholiland and northern Uganda to be an exception in contemporary Uganda, which has been celebrated by the international community for its increased political stability and particularly for its fight against AIDS. In this narrative, the Acholi are portrayed as war-prone, whether because of religious fanaticism or intractable ethnic hatreds. In "Living with Bad Surroundings", Sverker Finnstrom rejects these characterizations, and he challenges other simplistic explanations for the violence in northern Uganda. Foregrounding the narratives of individual Acholi, Finnstrom enables those most affected by the ongoing 'dirty war' to explain how they participate in, comprehend, survive, and even resist it. Finnstrom draws on fieldwork conducted in northern Uganda between 1997 and 2006 to describe how the Acholi - especially the younger generation, those born into the era of civil strife - understand and attempt to control their moral universe and material circumstances. Structuring his argument around indigenous metaphors and images, notably the Acholi concepts of good and bad surroundings, he vividly renders struggles in war and the related ills of impoverishment, sickness, and marginalization. In this rich ethnography, Finnstrom provides a clear-eyed assessment of the historical, cultural, and political underpinnings of the civil war while maintaining his focus on Acholi efforts to achieve 'good surroundings,' viable futures for themselves and their families.