Abstract
In this article, we consider how biographical research can avoid common pitfalls such as viewing social phenomena as ahistorical, focusing on single individuals (as if they exist in isolation), neglecting power inequalities and power balances, or ignoring collective discourses and their impact on the groupings or individuals concerned. When conducting biographical research, we are constantly at risk of falling into these traps, despite all our good intentions. To meet this challenge, we suggest an approach that combines social-constructivist biographical research with the principles of figurational sociology. This makes it possible to investigate the mutual constitution of individuals and societies, interdependencies between different groupings or we-groups (and different kinds of we-groups), and the changing power inequalities or power balances between and inside them, within different figurations in varying historical, ‘social’, and geographical contexts. To illustrate this methodological approach, we present examples from our joint field research on local post-war and peace processes, carried out in two adjacent regions of northern Uganda. This research focuses on the situation following the return to civilian life of former rebel fighters from different sociopolitical, ethnopolitical, or regional settings or groupings, and from different rebel groups.
Introduction
The biographical research methods that have been established among German-speaking sociologists since the 1970s are mainly anchored in the tradition of the Chicago School and the interpretive paradigm. While there are differences between the authors, most of them are committed to social constructivism as formulated by Berger and Luckmann (1966), and in their empirical research they engage in case reconstructions of life courses and self-presentations in accordance with the principles of the sociology of knowledge. With the aid of reconstructive and interpretive methods (Riemann, 2006; Rosenthal, 2018; Schütze, 2014), first the structure of the individual case is reconstructed. After this, types are constructed on the basis of contrastive comparisons, for instance, types of biographies, of patterns of interpretation or biographical self-presentations, depending on the research question.
Gabriele Rosenthal was influenced by the methodology of the interpretive paradigm from the beginning of her scholarly career. Her first empirical studies were based on the sociology of knowledge developed by Alfred Schütz, and accordingly her aim was to reconstruct collective patterns of interpretation, and the rules of the discourses that were influential at different times in a person’s life. With the passing years, and as a result of systematic methodological reflection, she adopted a sociology-of-knowledge approach to discourse analysis, as prominently represented by Reiner Keller (2005). In recent years, working together with Artur Bogner, she has increasingly applied notions from Elias’s figurational sociology. This has involved certain methodological modifications, such as combining various data collection methods, and paying more attention to social figurations and historical, or long-term, processes when developing the sample, with a microanalysis of power inequalities and changing power balances between different groupings, including all kinds of we-groups (see Bogner and Rosenthal, 2014, 2017a, 2020; Rosenthal, 2012, 2016; Rosenthal et. al., 2011).
The aim of this article is to show how the combination of social constructivism and figurational sociology that we have developed can benefit biographical research, or any research based on social constructivism, and that it offers an opportunity to overcome the dichotomy of ‘individual’ and ‘society’ which still plagues us. Above all, it is important to conduct empirical studies and to avoid focusing unduly on single individuals and their power of agency while ignoring power inequalities. Related to this is the need to recognize what we could call the empirical dialectic between individuals and societies, or between individuals and collective actualities. In other words, we need to see that the two sides in this apparent dualism mutually constitute each other in a way that is accessible to empirical ( ‘sociological’ or ‘historical’) research.
In this article we will: (a) explain some of the main principles of social-constructivist biographical research; (b) point out the possible pitfalls it entails; (c) discuss the benefits of combining it with a figurational perspective; (d) show the consequences for empirical studies; and, finally, and (e) briefly describe our research in northern Uganda, in order to illustrate how this method can be applied and the benefits it can bring.
On social-constructivist biographical research
In methodological and practical terms, adopting a social-constructivist approach in biographical research means taking the subjective experiences and perspectives of the actors as the starting point of the analysis and reconstructing their life history and its genesis. In so doing, it is important to take into account the mutual constitution of individuals and society, and to make an empirical study of the entwinement, the ‘interactions’ (to borrow the terminology of Georg Simmel and G. H. Mead), the uncircumventable interconnections, between biographical and collective historical processes. To do justice to these ‘interactions’ in a biographical research framework that starts from the biographies and life courses of individuals, there are two methodological requirements. On the one hand, it is important to interpret the significance of experiences, activities, or actions not in isolation but in the context of the biography as a whole, and, on the other hand, a process analysis is needed in order to reconstruct the historical emergence, reproduction, and alternation of ‘social’ phenomena. Reconstructing biographical courses in their ineradicable intertwining with collective histories is not just a matter of explaining ‘why’, in terms of a unilinear or unidirectional nexus between cause and effect. With a processual approach, we can reconstruct the reciprocal relationship between the collective history and the biography which has led to a specific biographical constellation and which has determined the experience and the activities of the autobiographer. It is not enough simply to ask why someone acted as they did, or, for example, what motivated them to leave their home region and migrate to another country. The question we need to ask is: in what collective and biographical situation, and during the course of what collective and individual events did this person leave their home region? The aim is to reconstruct – as far as this is possible – the person’s relations with other people or groupings, the governmental and legal regulations, and the discourses in concrete situations that resulted in a certain course of action, a certain chain of activities. The analysis of a biography is thus not reduced to regarding a life course in isolation, but asks about the autobiographer’s past and present networks of relationships, and the institutional, organizational and informal circumstances in which he or she was socialized.
Nevertheless, existing biographical studies often give the impression that the diachronic or processual method is not consistently applied by authors who claim to be using such an approach. The biographies are seldom embedded in a collective history, and the idea that individuals and society are mutually constitutive often does not go beyond the status of a theoretical creed. We believe this is due to the fact that sociology has taken since World War II an ahistorical view of social phenomena, and that, as discussed by Elias (1987) and Mennell (2018; cf. Bogner and Mennell, 2022), this distancing of sociology from history is problematic and has serious consequences. In the analysis of individual life courses or family histories, which can go back more than a hundred years, dehistoricization, and failure to contrast the perspectives of the we-group or grouping concerned with other perspectives that are structurally different, will almost inevitably result in perpetuation of the dominant myths of the grouping being studied. These myths tend to avoid problematic issues, and deny or conceal certain aspects of the history of the family and the larger collectivity or society to which it belongs. In the context of German history or the history of ethnic Germans, only interviewing members of groupings that use the dominant discourses would inevitably reproduce the usual dethematization of problematic phases in the family history and family memory, especially in respect of National Socialism and Nazi crimes (see Rosenthal et al., 2011).
Despite an increase in multigenerational studies and historico-biographical research in recent decades, sociological biographical research shows a tendency to ‘retreat into the present’, which is very common in sociology and which was criticized by Elias (1987). This fosters the illusion that it is possible to explain the present without referring to the past. For Elias, history without theory, and sociology without historical sources are either not possible or not meaningful. Rather, with the aid of contrastive comparisons of different perspectives and experienced life stories – including historical sources, which must be interpreted just as critically as interviews – we need to look at the ‘historico-cultural’ or collective circumstances in which the interviewees were active and were socialized and which shaped their stocks of knowledge, their experiences, and their biographical choices in the past and the present. In addition, we need to show which groupings dethematize or deny specific subject areas and historical events, and which groupings introduce them and talk about them.
On the problem of focusing excessively on single individuals and neglecting power inequalities
Despite all theoretical or methodological programs, it is not easy to avoid the pitfalls of research that is ahistorical, strongly focused on the single individual (with a tendency to regard this individual in isolation), and which fails to take power inequalities and power balances into account. In biographical research, this is mainly due to a combination of the following factors:
(a) a social-constructivist approach that looks primarily at the stock of knowledge of single individuals;
(b) the typical features of autobiographical self-presentations, which are often dominated by an ‘egocentric’, quasi individualistic perspective;
(c) biographical research with a methodological design that concentrates on autobiographical self-presentations in individual interviews.
Unlike a sociology of knowledge in the tradition of Mannheim or Elias, the sociology of knowledge developed by Alfred Schütz carries the risk of remaining restricted to single individuals and their perspectives, and not going beyond this. This tends to result in an ‘intentionalist’ interpretation of interactions, where social processes are attributed solely to the motives and intentions of the individual actors. This happens when the perspectives and courses of action of individuals are not sufficiently considered in the light of their relationships with other individuals, or with their we-groups or other groupings, and when the omnipresent power inequalities and the dominant discourses in the different groupings are not taken into account in the analysis. In empirical studies, an emphasis on agency, especially that of one individual is co-determined by the justified counter position toward a sociology which regards humans as ‘Strukturdeppen’ (social structure idiots), as Ronald Hitzler (2007: 12; our translation) has pithily put it:
1
Interpretive social research begins with the premise that human beings are not ‘(social-) structure idiots’ – entirely dependent on culturally established norms and institutions – but that their actions and interactions are necessarily knowledge-led, and at the same time always knowledge-generating processes [. . .] (our emphasis).
The problems which arise from this counter position often have the consequence that ‘the possibilities that the sociology of knowledge has for analyzing socio-structural interrelationships as interrelationships between meanings are not (fully) exploited’ (Meuser, 2003: 121, our translation). However, looking at ‘collective orientations’ and social frameworks for action, or frameworks for action that are given and frequently institutionalized by social groups, cannot be the whole solution if we still concentrate on single individuals and retain an and-summation conception 2 of social groups or formations.
In biographical research, the risk of focusing excessively on single individuals is greater due to the use of biographical self-presentations. Especially in the Global North, the interviewees usually place themselves firmly at the center of their presentations, and in retrospect frequently reinterpret activities that were the result of coincidences, unplanned social constellations or the unintended consequences of social processes, as planned and intended actions of a single individual. Together with Mannheim, Elias and others, we argue that the more complex a society, the more difficult it is for its members to understand unplanned social processes (or the blind, unintended aspects of planned social processes). Furthermore, people frequently do not adequately appreciate the importance of their interdependencies with other groupings or other people; they often greatly overestimate or underestimate their own power chances or their own power of agency, or the way this power is limited, for instance due to their being a member of a less powerful grouping. They do not always see the changing power balances and power inequalities between their we-group and other groupings, and tend to underestimate the effects of the dynamic that results from the immanent instability of power relations (cf. Bogner, 1986). Especially people who belong to the established in a particular context, and people who aspire to do so, frequently fail to see, or refuse to see, the power inequality between established and outsider groupings.
Our research, and that of our colleagues in Palestine, Jordan, Ghana and Uganda, shows that the members of established groupings frequently employ a discourse suggesting there are no power inequalities, and that the more these inequalities are denied, the more painfully they are felt by the powerless outsiders (Bogner and Rosenthal, 2014; Rosenthal, 2016). Moreover, the outsiders often accept the dominant discourses and, at least partly, base their own (collective and individual) self-image on the image that the established have of them (Bogner, 2003; Elias, 2008: 1–36; Mennell, 1989).
With a methodological approach that initially concentrates on the life courses and biographical self-presentations of individuals, it is easy to reproduce this excessively individual-centered perspective, despite all declarations to the contrary; and this is particularly so, if only autobiographical interviews or autobiographical sources are analyzed, and perhaps from members of only one grouping, we-group, or milieu.
Social constructivism and figurational sociology
We propose to counter this tendency by combining social-constructivist biographical research with figurational sociology and its methodological implications. This makes it possible to see individuals more clearly in their interrelationships with other people, we-groups and other groupings, organized groups or institutions, and the way they are influenced by dominant discourses.
In both traditions, societies and organizations cannot be conceived without individuals; both are based on a conception of ‘society’, or, more exactly, of societies, as a reality that is constantly or repeatedly produced by the interplay of individuals, and thus with a processual (and strictly relational) understanding of the form of existence of this ‘object’. We believe that linking biographical research concentrated on individual biographies and family histories with figurational sociology, which is more strongly focused on collective and long-term transformation processes, can make it easier to overcome the problematic separation of micro, meso, and macro perspectives which dominates social science discourses (see Bogner and Rosenthal, 2017a). Moreover, a sociology-of-knowledge approach to discourse analysis can help biographical research in its efforts to observe the relative effect, or relative lack of effect, of hegemonic discourses on biographical self- and we-presentations, and to study the way they interact with the power inequalities within social groupings and figurations of social groupings – especially figurations of established and outsiders. 3
We plead here firmly in favor of an empirical approach, in other words for an exact empirical reconstruction of which ‘cultural’ practices are dominant in which historical and social contexts, and which are marginalized. With an investigation of the micro level – such as a biography – it is possible to render visible social structures or patterns on macro levels (and vice versa), as demonstrated by Elias (2010a) in his study on Mozart, for instance. The objects on the micro level are to be understood as concrete and constitutive parts of (or a different organizational level of) larger objects which appear to be separate units on the macro level, and not (or not primarily) as instances of generalized laws or generalized features (e.g. Elias, 1956: 246ff. and passim; Elias, 2009, 2012b: 125–127).
But why do we need figurational sociology, since its basic assumptions concerning the interplay between the ‘general’ and the ‘particular’ correspond to the interpretive paradigm and the hermeneutic sociology of knowledge? We are convinced that the decisive advantage of a figurational sociology perspective arises from three central assumptions in the work of Elias, which have important methodological implications:
Human beings exist and live with each other in configurations or constellations of mutual, and often asymmetric, dependencies. They exist only as parts of such ‘figurations’, of gestalt-like and dynamic webs of interdependencies that are characterized by relatively close links between the parts and the whole (Elias, 2010b: 13–23). In other words, the relationship between human individuals and the ‘social’ figurations that they form can be described as one of mutual constitution – and of empirical mutual constitution. The one cannot exist without the other (see for instance Elias, 2009; Elias and Scotson, 2008: 51). In the spirit of gestalt theory, Elias (1956: 227) opposes an and-summation conception of society.
Furthermore, Elias (2012a: 591) points out that ‘[. . .] this
In Elias’s theory, what mainly characterizes figurations is that changing, and often asymmetric, power balances (i.e. power inequalities) are an integral part of them. They are an element of all human relationships and, like the relationships themselves, they are in a constant state of flux. The changing balance or ratio resulting from the interplay of (mostly) reciprocal dependencies is the basis for varying degrees of power inequality or equality. All these are features of the whole figuration (i.e. of the whole network of mutual dependencies) and not just of parts of it.
Accepting these assumptions means that biographical self-presentations must always be considered in the light of the relevant social figurations and discourses, and of the power inequalities and power balances between individuals or groupings inherent in them. Because of the gestalt-like and processual aspects of power relations, social figurations, as defined in figurational sociology, must be investigated primarily by means of configurative and reconstructive empirical studies.
Methodological consequences
From our theoretical reflections and our empirical experience, we have derived relatively simple methodological consequences for a research design that helps to avoid the above-mentioned pitfalls. Most importantly, we adopt a long-term perspective in our studies wherever this is possible, and implement this methodologically, for example, by conducting multigenerational studies and by including historical, archival and other accessible data; in addition, we take account of spatial arrangements and architectural structures. We always work with a multi-method research design including, where possible, group discussions, family interviews, and participant observation. When analyzing interviews, we seek to uncover the influential discourses, in the past and the present, that set the rules for presenting collective, familial, or individual histories. With a consistently process-oriented, that is, diachronic and figurational approach, it is important to consider the different we-groups or groupings to which individual interviewees belong and which vary at different times, as well as their interactions with various other groupings. This is because we do not follow the logic of ‘control groups’ (defined according to mainly quantitative criteria), but let the development of our sample be guided by what we discover in the course of the empirical research, and what this makes us want to investigate further – not least, with which other groupings (usually several other groupings) the interviewees form figurations that influence their actions.
Thus, the development of the sample is guided, on the one hand, by the greatest possible variation within a grouping, and on the other hand, by the need to interview people with whom the members of the grouping that interests us interact or are dependent on. Among other things, it is important here to include conflictual relations or dependencies. Conducting group discussions with different groups of people helps us to accurately reconstruct the networks of relations within a we-group or grouping, or between different groupings. Group discussions or group interviews have the advantage that a common we-image and sense of belonging, which is always a power factor and nearly always a central source of power, is thematized here more easily than in individual interviews, and therefore, in our experience, becomes visible more quickly and more easily. As a rule, such a we-image, at least in the case of larger or somewhat more stable we-groups (such as families), includes an image of a collective history. For group discussions, the selection of participants is determined by the empirical findings from individual interviews and the results of previous group discussions or observations. Conversely, group discussions influence further planning in respect of selecting candidates for individual interviews. This makes it possible to empirically verify or falsify assumptions in respect of the relationships between people who are members of different groupings, and thus between people who represent different patterns of interpretation or different types of experience, for instance, in respect of who substantially determines the discourse, or whose voice is silenced. We strongly advocate interviewing members of groupings that do not have an audible voice in the public discourses (i.e. public beyond the scale of families or small groups). This means deliberately seeking the voices of outsiders, and including their perspectives and their comparatively low power chances in the analysis. In this way, we, as sociologists, can avoid falling into the trap of adopting dominant public discourses uncritically, or reproducing them practically unchanged (see Bahl, 2017; Becker, 2017; Bogner and Rosenthal, 2014, 2017a; Hinrichsen, 2017; Rosenthal, 2016; Worm and Hinrichsen, 2016).
Changing power balances in figurations of ex-rebels, central government and civilians in northern Uganda
In order to show the benefits of an approach that combines social-constructivist biographical research with the principles of figurational sociology, we present here some results of our joint field research on local post-war and peace processes in West Nile und Acholiland, two adjacent regions of northern Uganda (for a detailed account, see Bogner and Rosenthal, 2014, 2017b, 2020; cf. also Bogner and Neubert, 2013a; 2013b, 2016). 4 The focus will be on our empirical findings concerning figurations of ex-rebels, central government and local civilians, and the power inequalities between them. In other words, we will concentrate on the benefits gained from a method in which the grouping in which we are interested is studied in its figuration with other groupings.
First, we offer some important background information in respect of these two regions in northern Uganda, which share similar (and closely interrelated) pre-colonial, colonial and national macro-histories, but which have followed very different paths in the post-colonial period since 1962. After the end of Idi Amin’s rule in 1979,
In West Nile, especially in the second phase (1994–2002) of the armed rebellion, it is probable that all parties involved carried out terrorist attacks on the local civilian population, with whom the two main rebel groups then operating in this province nevertheless maintained close relations, and by whom they were at first strongly supported. But this support waned as brutal attacks against the civilian population increased, apparently carried out by the rebels increasingly more often than by government soldiers. (This applies to the second phase of the rebellion but not to the first phase in 1979 and the following years). In 2002 a peace agreement was signed between the government and the last active rebel organization anchored in this region, the ‘Uganda National Rescue Front II’ (UNRF II). 5
In
One of the main empirical findings from our comparison of these two regions is that in West Nile the returned rebels are accepted as belonging to the (relatively well) established groupings, especially in their figuration with the civilians who were robbed and injured, apparently, in the long term, mainly by the rebels; while the returned former child soldiers in Acholiland are clearly outsiders, both in local public life and in their families. Evidently, the process of ‘reintegration’ into civilian life has been much easier for the ex-rebels in West Nile than for those in Acholiland. While in West Nile discourses on the rebellion tend to be dominated by the ex-rebels and their perspectives, whereas the voices of the victims are mostly suppressed or ignored by rebels and government representatives alike, in Acholiland the former rebels tend to avoid speaking in public about their past as rebel soldiers (Bogner and Rosenthal, 2017, 2020: chapter 5). And yet the thousands of former child soldiers who returned from the LRA have long been a topic of great interest to scholars and humanitarian organizations, while the victims of violence in West Nile have attracted little or no attention in international and national media. How can these differences be explained?
Superficially, we can identify at least two components with ‘functional significance’ (Gurwitsch, 2010: 135) which can account for the difference between the two regions:
(a) The trajectories of the armed conflicts, and the processes of ending them, are very different. Besides the generally far more numerous and, on average, worse atrocities committed by the LRA rebels against their ‘own’ local civilian population, an important difference is that a formal peace agreement was signed in the case of the UNRF II in West Nile, while efforts to achieve this in the case of the LRA in Acholiland failed. This gives the ex-rebels in West Nile a more powerful position, compared with those in Acholiland, both in their relations with the central government and in their local social settings. The demobilization of the rebels in West Nile was the result of a group decision to capitulate or to negotiate a peace agreement with the government. There was no formal peace agreement with the West Nile Bank Front, the bigger of the two rebel groups in West Nile, but large groups of rebel combatants capitulated, with a promise of protection through local arrangements with the national army or the government. By contrast, the demobilization or escape of LRA ‘returnees’ was generally an individual act. And if they had run away from the LRA, the rebel group often took revenge by cruelly attacking their families or communities of origin, at least up to 2006. Their return to civilian life is often interpreted as a kind of desertion or betrayal of the common cause of the rebels and/or their ethnic group. If they are lucky, they are simply regarded as misguided or failed rebel soldiers.
(b) In West Nile, unlike in Acholiland, underage persons were recruited by force only in exceptional cases. Even though young men may have felt a certain amount of pressure, as a rule they joined the rebels more or less voluntarily (and often with the approval of their families). The rebel fighters in West Nile were almost exclusively male and many of them had already married. Generally they maintained contact with their families, wives or partners (see also Mischnick and Bauer, 2009; Refugee Law Project, 2004). By contrast, the children and adolescents in Acholiland who had been violently torn from their families usually had no further contact with them until their return from the LRA, often after many years. On returning, they were met by a civilian population that had become estranged from the rebel fighters, much more so than in West Nile.
If we had only interviewed the ex-rebels in these two regions, we would probably have overlooked other factors that help to explain this difference. Our understanding of their past, and of the relations between different groupings in the present and in the past, would also have been shaped by the perspectives of the established or dominant discourses in the two regions – which largely match the hegemonic opinions in academic research.
In both regions, we first concentrated on interviewing rebels who had returned to civilian life. In a subsequent phase of the research, we conducted biographical interviews, expert interviews and ethnographic interviews with civilians and relatives of the ex-rebels, as well as family interviews and group discussions with people from different groupings. This procedure helped us to gradually gain a better understanding of the complexity of the various figurations of ex-rebels and civilians. In order to show how our understanding deepened, we will briefly describe the procedure we followed in our research, although the different phases overlapped and alternated with each other much more than it may appear here. For example, in the context of the first project in West Nile, and in order to gain a better understanding of that situation, we also spent short periods of time doing field research and conducting interviews in neighboring Acholiland.
Field research in West Nile
Phase 1: interviews with ex-rebels, expert interviews, and ethnographic interviews with civilians
The interviews we conducted in West Nile show that the dominant discourse on collective belonging, among both civilians and ex-rebels, has the whole population of the province as its collective subject and claims that ‘we (in West Nile) are the real victims of Uganda’s history’, where the term ‘we’ can easily be replaced by the ex-rebels, who are regularly referred to by the local elders as ‘our boys’. 6 The ex-rebels in West Nile are a strong we-group, with a strong but elastic we-image. Depending on the communication context, it may refer to all the inhabitants of West Nile, all Muslims in West Nile, or the members of a particular ethnic grouping.
Thus, in a (relatively) unproblematic way, they share the same we-image as the local people or certain subgroupings within the population of this region. A decisive factor is that the ex-rebels in West Nile organized themselves in various veteran associations after their armed struggles had come to an end. This grouping’s homogenizing we-image and collective memory became clear in the group discussions we conducted in the context of different associations of former rebels or ‘ex-combatants’. In the interviews, the ex-rebels occasionally mentioned certain differences between their organization and the LRA, for instance, they claimed that they did not abduct children, did not carry off women or rape them, and generally avoided any conflict with the civilian population. They underlined that they felt supported by the civilians. They also stressed that they did not use magical powers, like the LRA and its predecessor (the Holy Spirit Movement) in Acholiland. Some ex-rebels, especially high-ranking officers, also emphasized that they had a professional military training, gained while serving in previous government armies.
In interviews with civilians, with members of the political and administrative system and humanitarian organizations, it became clear that the leaders of the local population either share or hardly oppose this view of the history of the conflict and the current situation in West Nile in an explicit manner. Hardly anyone mentioned violent acts committed by the rebels. Although civilians occasionally criticized the ex-rebels, their feelings of resentment, which were sometimes openly expressed, crystallized mainly around the question of why, after the signing of a peace treaty in 2002, support by the government, as they claimed, had been given to the ex-rebels but not to the civilian population. It became apparent that these unfriendly feelings entertained by parts of the civilian population were not spoken aloud mainly for fear of endangering the peace that had been achieved after negotiations and the peace accord between the government and the rebels in this region (see Bauer, 2013: 179–180; Bauer and Giesche, 2007; Brix, 2009: 37–39; Peters, 2008: 44–7, 53–55, 22; Weber, 2009: 66–67).
Phase 2: interviews with victims of violence by the rebels
In the light of these findings, we sought to interview people who had been injured, abducted, or raped by the rebels. With the aid of our research assistant Droma Geoffrey, 7 it was very easy to find such individuals. It quickly became apparent that they were pleased to at least have someone they could talk to about their suffering, and to be able to step out of the shadow of the public discourse (for details, Bogner and Rosenthal, 2014). The desire to talk about the past was so strong that, following the interviews and group discussions with us, a woman – whom we will call Fatma – successfully (and with support from several sides) founded a self-help group for women who had been raped. And with Fatma’s help, Yusuf, a man whose property had been badly plundered and whose ears had been cut off by the rebels, founded a non-governmental organization called the ‘Group of Landmine Survivors’ (see Bogner and Rosenthal, 2014). In accordance with the rules of the public discourse, no distinction was made here between the victims of different kinds of collective violence. As the mines were laid by both rebels and government soldiers, this small association was able to unite former soldiers, rebels and civilians without much difficulty. With this name, the existence of this group did not contradict the heroic we-image of the rebels, that is, the idealizing components of their collective self-image or collective charisma.
Altogether, we were able to conduct eight biographical narrative interviews and two group discussions with victims of the ex-rebels. Some were women who were raped by the rebels and taken to the ‘bush’ to work for them or to serve as sex slaves, in some cases for several years. Others were not only robbed by the rebels and threatened with death, but also mutilated, like having their ears or nose cut off. Rebel commanders we interviewed explained these attacks as being due to disciplinary offenses, or the settling of ‘private accounts’.
In contrast to the ex-rebels, the victims of violence show no sign of a we-feeling or we-image as a group in their interviews. The ex-rebels almost always begin their presentation with a highly stereotyped version of the history of West Nile, while the victims do not embed their narratives in a collective history. It seems that, if any at all, they only have we-concepts that (at least in principle) include both the civilian victims of violence and the perpetrators from among the ex-rebels. It seems that both groups are hardly aware that they have divergent and potentially conflicting goals, desires or needs. In the interviews with victims of violence, the interviewees have the fundamental problem that for their self-presentation they can only use the same established we-concepts as the perpetrators. It also becomes clear that the ex-rebels and the victims have very different ways of dealing with and communicating their distressing experiences and the problems they have in their daily lives, even though they belong to the same local milieus and are generally part of the same social networks.
Moreover, the peace agreement, at least implicitly, supports the rebels’ interpretation of the situation, according to which they achieved something positive for the inhabitants of West Nile with their struggle, namely a promise by the government to promote the ‘development’ of this region after many years of a development blockade. This definition of the situation in the agreement negotiated with the government permits the rebels to present themselves in the public discourse as protectors of the interests of the local population, especially their need for development. Even if this interpretation is no longer generally accepted, in practice it is not openly criticized. In one of our group interviews with victims of violence, fear of the ex-rebels, their connections and their influence on the government and in the local administration was openly named by one of the participants as the reason why the victims could not talk publicly about their problems. Furthermore, from time to time the rebels threatened to resume their rebellion, thus using the threat of physical violence as a power resource.
A comparison of the two groupings shows that public discourses, and thus the historiography of the rebellion in West Nile, are dominated by the perspective of the ex-rebels, partly due to their strong group cohesion – which is always an important source of power – and their public position due to the official peace agreement, in contrast to the victims of collective violence (whether committed by the rebels or by government soldiers). The voices of the victims remain largely unheard, a situation that is reinforced by international and scholarly discourses which tend to portray the conflict between the government and the rebel groups in northern Uganda in an almost dichotomous fashion (Bogner and Rosenthal, 2014). By contrast, national and international discourses, especially in the mass media, but also in academic circles, have shown considerable interest in the child soldiers abducted by the LRA and the violence they suffered, as well as the violent acts they committed.
Field research in Acholiland
Phase 1: interviews with former child soldiers
The interviews with former child soldiers and abductees reveal a process of sequential traumatization (Keilson, 1992) which often began at a young age and continued after their return from the ‘bush’. 8 In contrast to the rebels in West Nile, they were frequently abducted at an age when many young people are just beginning to develop a sense of solidarity with others. One of the consequences of such extreme traumatization (Niederland, 1980: 10) is that the person’s sense of belonging to humanity is impaired and replaced by feelings of alienation from others. An aggravating factor is that, more often than the ex-rebels in West Nile, the child soldiers and ex-rebels in Acholiland returned to starkly altered and fragile family constellations. Furthermore, the periods of armed fighting from 1979 onward were much longer in Acholiland than in most parts of West Nile.
In addition to the common consequences of extreme traumatization, like distressing nightmares or flashbacks, these former child soldiers suffer from a high degree of social isolation, a scarcity or lack of social spaces or contexts in which they can freely talk about their past, and various kinds of discrimination. Unlike the ex-rebels in West Nile, but similar to the victims there, they do not form a (separate) we-group and they have only a rudimentary we-image or collective memory. They have not organized themselves in associations, and they scarcely discuss their past with each other, even in informal contexts, which is certainly due, at least in part, to the identity management strategy of concealing the fact that they fought for the LRA (see also Hollander, 2010: 67ff., 60ff., 80). While the ex-rebels in West Nile can speak in local public spaces with self-respect or pride and relatively freely about their time in the ‘bush’, this is not possible for the former child soldiers and rebel fighters in Acholiland (with the exception of those who have since joined the government army) (cf. Bogner and Rosenthal, 2020: 103, 128–132). In other words, their past cannot really help them to develop a collective self-esteem that would back up their individual self-image and self-respect in the present. For some of them, the interview with us was the first time they had talked to anyone about how they had suffered while with the LRA, and from interview to interview they became increasingly able to describe the acts of violence they had committed themselves. It was often clear that they wanted to talk about these things, and hoped that we would help them to start a dialogue in their families of origin about their time with the LRA.
Phase 2: family interviews and individual interviews with relatives of former child soldiers in Acholiland
From our interviews with relatives of former child soldiers, and especially family interviews (Bogner and Rosenthal, 2020) at which the returnees were present, it is clear that the serious problems of the returnees, and the difficulties they face in trying to become reintegrated in civilian life, are not due to themselves alone. Rather, several families we interviewed were clearly unwilling to accept the returnees back into the family. This was connected, on the one hand, with a refusal to grant participation rights and rights to the use of land, and, on the other hand, with fear of a person who is believed to be possessed by bad spirits. In the family interviews, we repeatedly observed a certain alienation between the returnees and members of the family who had not been abducted. The attitude of the latter toward them was distanced and respectful, but at the same time expressed an unspoken reproach. With reference to alleged Acholi traditions, they often argued that the ex-rebels, due to their contested or unclear positions in the families and clans, had no right to land, and in some cases even refused to let them return to the family compound.
Thus, the returnees in Acholiland clearly occupy an outsider position, not only in general, but also in their families of origin and their local communities of origin. This finding completely contradicts the dominant public discourse in Acholiland, which refers to the supposed traditional local culture of reconciliation. Rather, the returnees are excluded and discriminated against, and thus usually denied the chance to talk about their past (see also Hollander, 2010). Interestingly, this aspect of the dominant discourse on the rebellion in Acholiland is comparable to that in West Nile. Instead of the crimes committed against civilians by the LRA, including violent abduction of their children, people speak about the crimes and errors of the government or the national army, or the supposed Acholi tradition of reconciliation.
Conclusion
A comparison of the different groupings in the two regions reveals the importance of group coherence, the degree of organization, or the formation of a we-group for power chances in figurations with other groupings. The returnees in Acholiland and the victims of collective violence in West Nile do not form a we-group, they are not organized as such a group, and they have only a rudimentary we-image or collective memory. By contrast, the ex-rebels in West Nile are a strong we-group with a clear we-image; they are much better organized and networked as veterans, and they occupy a relatively established position in their local setting. In both regions, the violence suffered and committed by the rebels is dethematized. While in West Nile the dominant discourse regards the ex-rebels as part of the we-group of the local inhabitants without any problem, in Acholiland the ex-rebels, including many former child soldiers, are clearly alienated from the civilians. The returnees are perpetrators and beset by bad spirits, or at best the victims of crimes. Their two roles – perpetrators versus victims of violence – are unclear in each individual case and are given different emphasis depending on the discursive context. We again see here the importance of a shared we-image in the relationship between ex-rebels and civilians, even if this common we-image is vague, blurred and not very standardized. For the ex-rebels as a grouping this is also true of their image of a collective past that is specific to them.
We hope that we have succeeded in showing how much better we can do justice to the complexity of the social world by regarding relations between different groupings from the perspective of figurational sociology (including investigations into changing power balances and the we-images of outsiders) than by concentrating too strongly on only one grouping and interpreting its social reality without sufficient knowledge of the historical background. We believe that it is vital to include the voices of outsiders in the analysis of any social reality in order to avoid reproducing the discourses of the established groupings within a local, regional (or national) setting, and thus, only their versions of the collective present and the collective past.
Footnotes
Authors’ note
The introductory theoretical part of this article is a revised and translated version of a text originally published in German (see Rosenthal and Bogner, 2019). Our thanks go to Ruth Schubert for her extremely skillful editing and translation.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the German Research Foundation [DFG ref. no.: NE 640/3-1; 2; NE 640/7-1; 2].
