A very readable book and one that challenges current development discourses with good ethnography and historical scholarship. ... Will be particularly useful for teaching in undergraduate courses and in postgraduate seminars… Essential reading for students of Uganda, and indeed for students of Africa.
- Michael Whyte, African Studies Review
A very readable book and one that challenges current development discourses with good ethnography and historical scholarship. It is a book that will be particularly useful for teaching in undergraduate courses and in postgraduate seminars… And it is essential reading for students of Uganda, and indeed for students of Africa.
- Michael Whyte, African Studies Review
An attractive option for classroom use. ... Advanced undergraduate students in anthropology, history, and development studies would find much to value in this text. Graduate students and specialists will also appreciate Jones' ability to integrate sophisticated theoretical arguments into a compelling ethnohistorical analysis.
- Alicia Decker, International Journal of African Historical Studies
A fascinating and convincing book… Yoweri Museveni, so the story goes, has made the hard decisions that would usher in economic, social, and political development, and for that he is feted in Western capitals and is showered with millions in aid. Instead, Jones examines Oledai sub-parish in the Iteso region of eastern Uganda, where the state and NGOs appear more or less irrelevant to daily life, and the achievements for which Museveni is hailed are nowhere to be seen.
- Brett L. Shadle, Journal of African History
An accessible, intelligent, and stimulating account, and a very welcome addition to a literature on Uganda which frequently does limit itself, as Jones himself argues, to rather reactionary and conventional accounts of developmental 'transformation'.
- Tania Kaiser, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
An accessible, intelligent and stimulating account, and a very welcome addition to the literature on Uganda.
- Tania Kaiser, School of Oriental and African Studies, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
I consider the book to be a welcome addition to the recent ethnographic literature on East Africa.
- Jan de Wolf, Social Anthropology
Beyond the State in Rural Uganda offers a new anthropological perspective on how to think about processes of social and political change in poorer parts of the world, appealing to anyone interested in African development.
Society Now
Offers a new anthropological perspective on how to think about processes of social and political change in poorer parts of the world, appealing to anyone interested in African development.
Society Now
... a refreshing and original antidote to the myopic habits of conventional scholarship... [an] illuminating, astute, against-the-grain study of real-existing development.’
- James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology, Yale University,
… an excellent critique of perspectives focusing on the success of a reform-minded Ugandan state. Jones portrays instead the weakness of central government in the countryside and the deleterious effects of ‘external’ development schemes. His focus is on change generated from within the local community by the coalescences and interchanges among religious and kin-based associations.
- Joan Vincent, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University,