The Alur-ization of Aidan Southall – Contested Ethnonymic Traditions in North-Western Uganda

Abstract

Abstract:This article concerns some of the personal commitments and relationships that compelled British anthropologist Aidan Southall to write his seminal essay titled “The Illusion of Tribe” (1970). It analyzes the contested ethnic movement that Southall’s doctoral work on the Alur obscured, the reasons for this act of concealment, and the ways these experiences shaped the ideas he later advanced.