”The Third Time Janus Died”: Resilience and Dependencies In Coping With Adversity During And After Civil War In Northern Uganda

ABSTRACT

This article critically explores how local notions of coping and resilience among former forcibly recruited children and youth in the war-affected Acholi region resonate with established conceptualisations of resilience in resilience research that primarily originate from a US context. Based on 12 months of fieldwork in urban and rural Acholi contexts, the analysis shows how poverty, corruption, and the presence of international humanitarian organisations in the urban context, create dependencies that diminish community resilience in the Acholi region. The findings call for optimising the balance between emic and etic perspectives in resilience studies as well as in humanitarian interventions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics

This paper and the study adheres to the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki. All human beings who participated in this study gave oral as well as written concent. The study obtained formal ethical approval by the Ethics Research Committee at the Faculty of Medicine at Gulu University in 2013.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Rockefeller Resilience Research: IGA-Rockefeller Funding Call under Grant IDVTA.