Ideologies of Intervention: The Ugandan State and Local Organization in Bugisu

Ideology plays a major role in the struggles between state and subjects. In a case study on the control of coffee marketing in Bugisu, Uganda, the author examines how the Ugandan state has justified its continued intervention in the local economy and how power groups among the Bagisu have legitimated their claims against the state. Because actual control over the means of production in Bugisu is dispersed among numerous peasant smallholdings, the strategies of both central and local claimants to market control depend crucially on their capacity to mobilize this peasantry. A great deal of their competition for peasant support is carried out through the manipulation of abstract ideological principles – indigenous ideas of leadership, fair returns for labour and product, cooperative principles, managerial efficiency, national development – without much tendency to consistency. The result of this inconsistency has been a growing disillusionment of the peasantry with public political discourse, and a diminished potential for their political education or participation. Notes, ref. French sum. p. 71 and 127.