Pottery function and Nkore social activity

This article presents research regarding the instruction and production of pottery in Uganda during the twentieth century. It investigates how local low-tech pottery and community attitudes, as well as norms and values in traditional Ugandan pottery, have been displaced by competing modern technologies and selected community actions, which they in turn can be seen to influence. The proposition is that this shift in pottery manufacture reflects patterns of contemporary technological, socio-economic, cultural and power relations in Uganda in general and Nkore in particular. The proposition is further that this shift retains previous technological knowledge dispositions, specific to economic, social and cultural history in Uganda and its position in the global market. In other words, past local technology has left its mark on both past and present activities and attitudes to pottery making.