Postcolonial Patriarchal Nativism, Domestic Violence and Transnational Feminist Research in Contemporary Uganda

Abstract

This article examines the development of a multidimensional, transnational feminist research approach from and within Uganda in relation to a high-profile case of domestic violence and femicide of a middle-class, upper-caste Indian migrant woman in Kampala in 1998. It explores indigenous Ugandan public and Ugandan Asian/Indian community interpretations and the dynamics of cross-racial feminist mobilisation and protest that emerged in response to the Joshi-Sharma domestic violence case. In doing so, it advocates for a transnational feminist research approach from and within Uganda and the Global South that works against the grain of nationalist and nativist biases in existing feminist scholarly trends. This approach lays bare power inequalities and internal tensions within and across racialised African and Asian communities, and thus avoids the romanticisation of cross-racial feminist African-Asian solidarities.