Accountability, Sovereignty, Friendship : Inter-cultural Encounters in a Ugandan-Swedish Municipal partnership

Abstract: The interest for international development partnerships has increased within the discipline of cultural anthropology hand in hand with growing globalisation. Through the study of how actors that have engaged in a Ugandan-Swedish Municipal Partnership experience, express and utilise cultural difference, this thesis aims to make a contribution to this research by examine activities that took place in a specific context of cultural intersection. In addition, it aspires to link these experiences in the everyday life to general socio-political discourses. The material that the thesis builds upon was gathered during a total of four months of fieldwork in Manafwa district, Uganda, and the municipality of Åmål, Sweden. The main informants that were consulted during the fieldwork were civil servants, politicians and actors that in other ways had engaged in the partnership or in the several side-projects that were linked to it. In the analysis of their narratives, as well as of observations collected in the two field sites and of official documents that concerns the partnership, inspiration was drawn from previous research in the discipline of applied development anthropology as well as the institutionalised anthropology of development. Theories of intercultural interaction and the work of hegemonies have been used in order to examine development through the study object of cultural difference. The thesis has its starting point in two issues that were high on the agenda during my stay in Manafwa district; the 2014 Anti-homosexuality Act and corruption within the partnership. Through the study of the way that the engaged actors' experiences are used in order to create coherence in relation to these issues, the aim is to reach an understanding of how their world views are simultaneously shaped by and reshaping intercultural encounters. The ways in which claims of universal truths are used in order to install feelings of belonging and to motivate certain actions will be presented. Furthermore, the thesis will show how hegemonies in many ways are used in order to maintain hierarchies within development partnerships that in their official outlines claim that they intend to be equal.