Rebels and Charity Cases

Chapter 6 engages recent debates in anthropologies of humanitarianism and human rights that argue that categories like “victim” and “charity case” deny actors their political agency and reduce them to bare life. By examining how LRA rebels remained political militants even as they accepted charity and humanitarian aid, this chapter shows how these debates ignore how rebels speak in the trenches of these discourses. Their experiences expose “humanity” as a concept historically constructed in the opposition of the “ethical” and the “political.” In Acholiland, “ethics” and “politics” had different meanings and could coexist. Rebels accordingly exposed humanity as a premature fixer of political and ethical meaning, precluding dynamism and multiplicity of meaning in a global society in uncertain flux.