Social and Ritual Activity In and Out of Place: the ‘Negotiation of Locality’ in a Sudanese Refugee Settlement1

Abstract

This article argues that peoples' affective relationships with the specific physical territories that they inhabit are informed by and constructive of the social relations and practices which are enacted in them. When people are forced to leave their homes, the ways in which they engage with their physical, socio-cultural, political and spiritual landscapes are necessarily transformed. Based on ethnographic research with a group of long term Sudanese refugees in Uganda, the article shows how challenges to socio-cultural, ritual and political identities and activities are just as great as the more tangible challenges to protection and subsistence for refugees. The article examines a number of key socio-cultural activities including funeral rituals and agricultural practices, exploring the extent and ways in which ’place making‚ in exile involves the active mediation of external factors at a several levels as well as processes of compromise and substitution with respect both to material culture unavailable in the settlement, and also with in relation to social relations and practice.