Africa Rising, Africa Uprising: Middle-Class Futures in Urban Uganda Restricted; Files Only
Lindquist, Katharine (Spring 2024)
Abstract
Since the beginning of the 21st century, popularized development narratives of “Africa Rising” have projected the future of Africa as a neoliberal success story. Much less publicized is the story of “Africa Uprising,” embodied in the recent wave of social justice-oriented popular protest. Young professionals in Kampala – Uganda’s capital – feel the push and pull of these two futures-orientations acutely, constantly negotiating between the allure of a middle-class lifestyle and the inescapable realities of inequality in an increasingly autocratic state. Based on 24 months of ethnographic research in Kampala, my dissertation argues that Uganda’s young urban middle class have deep political commitments to progressive causes, but avoid open political organizing because of the risk of state-sanctioned violence. Instead young professionals undertake political actions that subvert state surveillance, building networks of communication and redistribution that transcend class lines. This political praxis is premised on notions of the future that combine orientations of hope and uncertainty, revealing a belief in the Uganda of tomorrow despite the lack of a clear political pathway forward.
My dissertation offers three ways of seeing a politics-in-the-making in urban Uganda. First, I argue that middle classness has become a new form of national expression in Uganda. I trace the emergence of middle classness as an urban form and show how it has become entangled in various projects of nation making. Second, my research acts as a counterpoint to claims that the middle class in Africa is politically complacent or conservative. My dissertation charts the landscape of an emergent progressive movement. I show how young professionals construct what is politically possible and in turn widen the realms of the “political” through ethnographic examples of an intentional – though sometimes hidden – political praxis. Third, the dissertation theorizes what I call the time of “somehow.” Young people in Uganda reflect their visions of the future through a contingent but hopeful temporality, one that accounts for crisis but doesn’t hinge on it. I show how this temporality is essential in shaping not only the present political landscape, but also works to open future – often radical – political imaginaries that exceed the current political constraints.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction: Seeing a Politics of Possibility in Futures Foreclosed 1
Chapter Two: The Making of the Ugandan State and the African Middle Class 34
Chapter Three: Middle Classness as Urban Form 78
Chapter Four: Political Subjectivities in Ordinary Times 109
Chapter Five: A Progressive Movement in the Making 146
Chapter Six: The Politics of Somehow in Urban Uganda 202
Chapter Seven: Conclusion: The View From Kampala’s Newest Casino 231
Bibliography 241
Non-Textual Sources 251
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File download under embargo until 22 May 2030 | 2024-04-23 22:15:03 -0400 | File download under embargo until 22 May 2030 |
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