Social Torture

<p> As Director of the Refugee Law Project at the University of Makerere Kampala Uganda Dolan offers a behind-the-scenes cross-disciplinary study of one of Africa's longest running and most intractable conflicts. This book shows how alongside the activities of the Lord's Resistance Army government decisions and actions on the ground consolidated by humanitarian interventions and silences played a central role in creating a massive yet only very belatedly recognized humanitarian crisis. Not only individuals but society as a whole came to exhibit symptoms typical of torture and the perpetrator-victim dichotomy became blurred. It is such phenomena and the complex of social political economic and cultural dynamics which underpin them which the author describes as social torture. Building on political economy social anthropology discourse analysis international relations and psychoanalytic approaches to violence this book offers an important analytical instrument for all those seeking entry points through which to address entrenched conflicts whether from a conflict resolution post-conflict recovery or transitional justice perspective.</p>