These Things Continue

Professor Susan Reynolds Whyte has made research upon the influence of war on a society trying to rebuild itself. Together with her colleague, Lotte Meinert from Aarhus University, she has published '"These Things Continue”: Violence as Contamination in Everyday Life After War in Northern Uganda'.

After decades of violent war, families are rebuilding their lives in the Acholi subregion of Northern Uganda. The return to normal order is marked by problems people see as consequences of the years of insecurity: mental illness, alcoholism, domestic violence, marital instability, and land conflicts that sometimes turn vicious. The ravages of war and years of constraint have left a legacy of troubles that is contagious and contaminating. The war is over, but people say that “these things continue.” In this article, Susan Reynolds Whyte and Lotte Meinert follow the case of one family and explore the social contagion and contamination of “these things.” They relate Acholi ideas of cen, the spirits of the vengeful dead, to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and phenomenological conceptions of violence and “the alien” in human experience.

Susan Reynolds Whyte, "These Things Continue”: Violence as Contamination in Everyday Life After War in Northern Uganda, ETHOS - Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, June 2017.