An Annotated Bibliography of Social Research on the Nuba Mountains

200 Pages·2016·2.18 MB·English

An Annotated Bibliography
of Social Research on
the Nuba Mountains
Edited by
Enrico Ille
An Annotated Bibliography
of Social Research on
the Nuba Mountains
Edited by
ENRICO ILLE
With the assistance of:
Konstantin Biehl
Rania Awad
Amira al-Jizouli
Jasmin Weinert
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF SOCIAL RESEARCH ON THE NUBA MOUNTAINS
Copyright © Chr. Michelsen Institute 2015.
P.O. Box 6033
N-5892 Bergen
Norway
[email protected]
Printed at Bodoni AS, Skjenet 10, 5354 Straume, Norway
Cover photo: Rita Willaert on flickr.com
Layout and design: Pernille Jørgensen
ISBN 978-82-8062-572-4
Contents
Table of contents .............................................................................................................................i
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................III
Preface .............................................................................................................................................iv
Romanization table .....................................................................................................................VII
Introduction: Enrico Ille .................................................................................................................1
Category 1: Pre-colonial history ..............................................................................................43
Category 2: Human geography and ethnographies .............................................................55
Category 3: Socio-cultural ideas and practices ....................................................................65
Category 4: Economy and livelihoods ....................................................................................91
Category 5: Administration and development ...................................................................119
Category 6: Politics and conflict ............................................................................................149
Category 7: Reports and other documents .........................................................................179
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AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL RESEARCH ON THE NUBA MOUNTAINS
Acknowledgements

It is thanks to Abdel-Ghaffar Mohamed Ahmed, Gunnar Sørbø and Leif Manger that this
bibliography came into being, financed by the project “Assisting Regional Universities in
Sudan and South Sudan” (ARUSS), a cooperation between the Chr. Michelsen Institute of
Bergen, the University of Bergen, the University of Khartoum, Ahfad University for Women
in Omdurman, the Red Sea University, the University of Kassala, the University of Gedaref,
the Blue Nile University, Dilling University, and the University of Nyala. The project is funded
by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thanks are also due to other supporters of
this initiative, namely Balghis Badri and my other colleagues at the Regional Institute for
Gender, Diversity, Peace and Rights at Ahfad University. Special thanks go to Samia El Nagar
for putting me in contact with Rania Awad, who was of invaluable assistance to this project.
It was possible for this volume to come together in a few months only because of previous
efforts of long-time colleagues in my research on the Nuba Mountains, most of all Richard
Rottenburg and Guma Kunda Komey. The basis of this annotated bibliography is a list of
references, the Nuba Mountains Bibliography, which is published and regularly updated on
the website of the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Halle
in Germany, as part of the Law, Organisation, Science and Technology (LOST) Research
Group.1 The list was originally a bibliographical database based on two four-year research
projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which examined the relation
of nomadic and sedentary people in South Kordofan, as well as markets and other economic
institutions in the post-war period between 2005 and 2011. The projects were headed by
my doctorate supervisor Richard Rottenburg and involved Guma Kunda Komey as senior
researcher and myself as student assistant, and later doctoral candidate.2 The bibliographical
work was also conducted by the assistants Uta Mahadi, Ronn Müller, Jasmin Weinert and
Konstantin Biehl; Konstantin Biehl representing the backbone of the effort to turn the list
into an annotated bibliography. Theses submitted at the University of Khartoum up to 2010
were collected by Amira al-Jizouli. Her work was continued, up until the end of 2014, by
Rania Awad at other universities in Khartoum. This added substantially to the number of
Arabic writings in this bibliography.
1
www.ethnologie.uni-halle.de/lost/nms
2
www.nomadsed.de/en/projects/projects-2008-2012/project-d9/index.html
III
Preface

Ten years ago, an annotated bibliography of social research on Darfur was published, similar
in intention and structure to the one at hand. Its main editor, Munzoul Assal, noted at the
beginning of his introduction that “[a] humanitarian catastrophe of a serious scale is unfolding
in Darfur” (Assal 2005, 4). That same year, in 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA) was signed between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation
Movement/Army (SPLM/A), prompting the many hopes for a better political future of the
country. It is now safe to say that that future did not materialize, as the cycle of blatant violence
and short-breathed agreements continues. There are now two Sudans, separated under the
assumption that they have separate issues to resolve, an assumption being questioned by the
militarily organized political contest and securitization of the state apparatus in the “new”
South Sudan. The same kinds of grievances also persist in the “old” Sudan, addressed by
the armed rebellion in the southern regions. Such grievances are not only a bitter continuity
of the “southern problem,” as “the south” is still seen most of all as a problem, but also an
indication that the CPA had only temporarily stopped the war between two war parties, and
did not provide feasible solutions to the underlying malcontent. One of the regions suffering
most as a result is that of the Nuba Mountains.
Given that the subject of this bibliography is a region that experienced intensive and extensive
violent conflicts for most of the last 20 years, one may question the rationale behind a bibliography
listing published social research of about 100 years, especially since the many works on “root
causes” of conflicts and peace-building efforts seem not to have made much of a difference
on the ground. While the basic function of this bibliography is quite clear; namely, to provide
an initial guide for anybody interested in social research on the Nuba Mountains, it may give
readers pause to attempt to contextualize this function. As often happens, answers lie in
how one individually relates to societal issues. My own motivation contains the professional
academic interest to share accumulated references after ten years of experience within the
region, especially in response to repeated claims of how little research has been done on the
region, but goes beyond that. It connects to an issue of wider interest; namely, the issue of
visibility and how it is created. Whether we apply the lens of victimhood or resistance, the
lens of authenticity or creativity, the lens of social order or social ordering, makes a difference
in how we get to know a place and the people that make it a place. There is value not only in
studying how places and people have been made visible, but also in creating new ways in which
to make them visible. The effect of such visibility has little predictability, but it is more than
a whimsical effort to contribute to the perception that there is more to the places and people
that make up the Nuba Mountains than remote mountains and targets. The rich history of
social studies presented here bears witness to that.
This being said, it is important to point out the limits of this volume. While it covers social
research from 1910 to early 2015, it is neither intended as a complete catalogue of such research
nor as a judgment on relevant and irrelevant publications. It merely gives a sense of “what
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AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL RESEARCH ON THE NUBA MOUNTAINS
is out there” and of who has been working on the region. It is an invitation to start looking,
and then find more. Through this bibliography, researchers in Sudan will be able to access
information on where to find some of the listed publications in Khartoum. For the most part,
only studies in English and Arabic have been included, the two languages dominating research
on the Nuba Mountains; exceptions are some important ethnographic studies in German
(Fritz W. Kramer and Gertraud Marx 1993; Richard Rottenburg 1991; Gerhard Hesse 2002)
and French (Patricia Musa-Launay 1992), as well as the overarching work of Rolf Husmann
(1984). Of the numerous unpublished theses, only those submitted for a doctoral degree
have been considered here. That leaves us with a huge number of Master theses worthwhile
discovering; in fact, one of the central publications on the region, R. C. Stevenson’s The Nuba
people of Kordofan province (1984), is a Master thesis.
The Nuba Mountains have been analyzed as a geographical region, which means that studies
on people belonging to the region, but not living there (i.e., refugees and migrants located in
different parts of the world), cannot be found here either. The settlement areas in northern
Kordofan, such as Jabal Harāza, were also not systematically included. Finally, the field of
social research was understood to encompass only those studies that specifically examine social
relations as such, thereby omitting the pure study of biological and environmental conditions.
More specifically, this excluded medical and environmental science studies, such as geology
and biology, unless they were actively related to human social interactions. Similarly, pure
linguistic analyses, which constitute a large body of literature, are not part of this bibliography.
However, the bibliography continues in the effort that Munzoul Assal’s 2005 publication made
in assembling several governmental and non-governmental reports that may be relevant to
assess additional data sources. What is left to future projects is a systematic list of archival
sources, especially in the National Records Office of Sudan and the Sudan Archive in Durham.
To be noted is that, a number of recent studies published in Arabic in Sudan were not available
for immediate inclusion in the annotation. These sources, as well as many unpublished papers
from conferences and workshops, will appear in the Nuba Mountains Bibliography.3
The selected entries were organized into six categories, followed by the technical reports,
which have not been annotated (category 7). The six categories are based on perceived topical
focus points that developed in social studies of the region. As in any categorization, the
boundaries could have been drawn very differently and many entries are ambiguous and
belong to more than one category, although they only appear in one. Therefore, a few words
on the different categories are necessary in order to explain why aspects that may seem very
close to each other have been differentiated.
The first category, “Pre-colonial history,” includes the literature that discusses the history of
the region before the British colonization, starting in 1898. The colonial period (1898-1956)
is not a category within itself, as most discussions of this period strongly connect it to post-
colonial developments, especially concerning colonial administration and its consequences after
independence. The second category, “Human geography and ethnographies,” is a collection of
3
www.ethnologie.uni-halle.de/lost/nms
v
general overviews of the region’s population and its environment, in addition to ethnographic
monographs that cover a number of aspects. “Socio-cultural ideas and practices,” the third
category, grasps all aspects of social distinction; i.e., those processes of social ordering that
lead to integration and differentiation, encompassing religion, language, arts, etc. Economic
aspects (i.e., the creation and distribution of life-sustaining material goods) are discussed
in the fourth category, “Economy and livelihoods,” which is closely connected to the fifth
category, “Administration and development,” relating to socio-economic changes. However,
while the studies placed into the fourth category took an overall descriptive approach of
these changes, related studies placed in the fifth category address them as “development;”
i.e., directional changes that are pursued by state and non-state actors. The sixth category,
finally, gathers studies with a focus on causes and patterns of violent conflicts, mostly with
regard to the developments since the mid-1980s.
Tragically, it is the sixth and last category that has seen the most additions during the last
years, in spite of a window of opportunity for varied research between 2005 and 2011. This
annotated bibliography, apart from being a handbook for those social researchers interested
in the region, is also an expression of hope that such a window will open once again at a
time when how to cope with violent conflicts is no longer the primary concern, but rather the
focus shifts on how to improve lives. If this is a worthy endeavor, the volume may be regarded
as an incipient step to systemize knowledge production around the Nuba Mountains that
can lead to more expanded, collaborative works in the future. Another quote from Munzoul
Assal’s previous work: “Errors and shortcomings are my own responsibility” (Assal 2005,
8) aptly concludes this preface.
Enrico Ille
Khartoum, 2015.
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AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL RESEARCH ON THE NUBA MOUNTAINS
Romanization table

Romanization in this publication follows, with one exception, the Hans Wehr transliteration
system, which largely corresponds to ISO 233:1984. The table shows Arabic and transliterated
letters, the asterisk indicates a deviation from the original system.
Letter Transliteration
ء ʼ
ا ā
ب b
ت t
ث ṯ
ج j *
ح ḥ
خ ḫ
د d
ذ ḏ
ر r
ز z
س s
ش š
ص ṣ
ض ḍ
ط ṭ
ظ ẓ
ع c *
غ ġ
ف f
ق q
ك k
ل l
م m
ن n
ه h
و w, u, or ū
ي y, i, or ī
vII