Spirits, Land, and Bones: The Social Ecology of Forensic Intervention

ABSTRACT In northern Uganda, the living and the dead remain bound together through land, spirits, and the slow labor of repair. Yet forensic science, when deployed in postconflict settings, often treats bodies as evidence and landscapes as backdrops, severing these ties in the name of science or justice. This article applies a socioecological lens to an “integrated approach” to forensic intervention that begins instead with Acholi understandings of personhood and place, in which spirits, animals, and soil are participants in social life. Based on years of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork—including interviews, community dialogues, and mapping of sites of hauntings and burials—the study shows how Acholi cosmologies unsettle the epistemic foundations of forensic practice. When the dead disturb the living, the problem is not only spiritual but ecological, demanding rebalancing among humans, nonhumans, and the land itself. We argue that forensic anthropology can become an act of listening rather than extraction—one that attends to the agencies of sites, spirits, and survivors alike. Reframing the work in this way reveals both the limits and the possibilities of forensic intervention, offering a vision of justice rooted not in recovery alone but in renewed relations among the living and the dead.