ABSTRACT
There has been frequent civil war in post-colonial Uganda. One of the puzzles of this fighting is that it has been more vicious in certain areas than in others. Vincent, one of the world’s most distinguished political anthropologists, unravels this puzzle. She explains variations in the ferocity of violence in terms of the existence of a scheme of cultural classification, a cultural hegemony, that differently evaluates Ugandans’ degree of civilization. Some Ugandans, those to the north, were classified as less civilized and were warred against with greater ferocity. Vincent argues that this cultural hegemony was introduced during the colonial period by the British as part and parcel of their introduction of agrarian capitalism. People in the north, where there was less capitalist agriculture, were seen as “savages.”
