From Warriors to Mere Chicken Men, and Other Troubles: An Ordinary Language Survey of Notions of Resilience in Ngakarimojong

Abstract

We examine some vernacular concepts that reflect Karamojong understanding and everyday experience of resilience following a devastating disarmament process, and what this means for resilience-driven humanitarian-development processes. We found that whereas humanitarian-development actors view market development, improved security, and accessibility as indicators of increased resilience capacity, local people paint a contrasting picture of a region with mounting inequality. We argue that Ngakaramojong concepts of resilience are, for the most part, unseen or ignored by humanitarian-development programming. In their current form, resilience-based intervention appears to neutralise and dismantle those aspects of communities that make them resilient in the first place.