Herbert Muyinda

Limbs and Lives: Disability, Violent Conflict and Embodied Sociality in Northern Uganda Herbert Muyinda

This book is about life conditions of people with disabilities in violent conflict situations. The book examines how violent conflict affects disabled people. It explores the perceptions and meanings of disability in such situations and examines the socio-cultural dynamics that shape the response of disabled people to the challenges brought about by conflict. The main argument is that the body is the basis for sociality and at the same time, sociality shapes that body. The book demonstrates this by showing how limbs are directly linked to lives not only through their biological function of making it possible for the bodies to physically move from one place to another, but also by being the basis for sociality, which sociality also influences the functioning of the limbs, shaping disabled people?s life experiences. Thus, the life experiences of disabled people cannot be described in terms of their impairments alone. Their abilities and disabilities are functions of the quality of their social relations and interactions; they are a reflection of the social response to their conditions, and the incorporation of sociality in their bodies ? embodied sociality.