BEYOND HEGEMONY: AFRICAN RELATIONAL THEORY AND HOUSEHOLD RESILIENCE IN POST-CONFLICT OMUGO SUB-COUNTY, TEREGO DISTRICT, UGANDA
Abstract
Mainstream development interventions in post-conflict agrarian spaces suffer from a profound conceptual blindness, relying on Western gender frameworks that reduce survival to individual material competition. This paper addresses this gap by deploying African Relational Theory to analyze the structural fracturing of reciprocity practiced by the Lugbara of Omugo Sub-County, Terego District, Uganda. Drawing on the six-month constructivist narrative ethnography with 77 interlocutors, the study rejects romanticized narratives of cultural endurance ideals and contemporary material realities. Acute land fragmentation, refugee-hosting pressures, and market commodification have rendered foundational mutual reciprocity institutions such as Oya (cooperative labor) and Andri-azi (in-law kinship alliances) structurally untenable except for Kita (the rotational like-minded labour-alliances). By isolating this friction, the article demonstrates that top-down policies misallocate resources, isolate men, and accelerate the decay of the very social infrastructure anchoring household resilience. These findings suggest therefore, that moving beyond hegemony requires sustainable livelihood interventions to abandon asset-only models and actively protect and reconstruct fracturing communal institutions.
Keywords: Hegemony, Household livelihood resilience, Post-conflict Terego, African Relational Theory, Reciprocity, the Lugbara
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