Mutations of globalisation and local actors’ agency: phenomena of the Social and Solidarity Economy in Uganda’s Busoga region

This paper examines transformations occurring in everyday life in Uganda’s Busoga region as a result of globalisation and the population’s responses to its manifestations. This is done with special emphasis on alternative economic practices, which can be classified as activities of the Social and Solidarity Economy. In the course of this study, several such practices have been encountered and turned out to be in a complex relationship with globalisation. A combination of postcolonial theory, the Post-Development approach, and world-systems analysis serves as a theoretical framework for the interpretation of the research results. The latter are based on empirical fieldwork carried out in the scope of a 34 months’ stay in the Busoga region in Eastern Uganda. By focussing on the everyday experience of people living in the region, the study attempts to learn from actors in the global South rather than try to teach or even to “develop” them.