Nuer Dilemmas

"Not just a brilliant restudy of one of anthropology's most famous 'peoples' but an exemplary historical ethnography that will be a landmark in the discipline. . . . With extraordinary sensitivity Hutchinson reveals how the Nuer have confronted the most profound moral, social, and political dilemmas of their—and our—changing world."—Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Writing Women's Worlds

This new 2023 edition of Nuer Dilemmas adds fresh material to Sharon E. Hutchinson's now widely-acclaimed and prize-winning historical ethnography about what became of the Nuer people of South(ern) Sudan after Evans-Pritchard completed his pioneering 1930s field studies. These new materials include a new Epilogue (in the Nuer language) in which she describes some of the personal security dilemmas she faced during her 1990s war-zone research while trying to cope with shifting governmental authorities in the field. The new edition also includes new illustrative materials and eliminates the former edition's appendix on comparative divorce rates. The new addition complements a new website (nuerdilemmas.com) which will soon be launched and will provide readers with access to a wealth of previously unpublished photographs and audio-tapes created by the author that add depth to her now "classic" ethnographic account. The new website will also provide readers with an English translation of the book's new Nuer-language Epilogue.

"Not just a brilliant restudy of one of anthropology's most famous 'peoples' but an exemplary historical ethnography that will be a landmark in the discipline. . . . With extraordinary sensitivity Hutchinson reveals how the Nuer have confronted the most profound moral, social, and political dilemmas of their--and our--changing world."--Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Writing Women's Worlds

Emma McCune’s passion for Africa, her unstinting commitment to the children of Sudan, and her youthful beauty and glamour set her apart from other relief workers from the moment she arrived in southern Sudan. But no one was prepared for her decision to marry a local warlord—a man who seemed to embody everything she was working against—and to throw herself into his violent quest to take over southern Sudan’s rebel movement. With precision and insight, Deborah Scroggins—who met McCune in Sudan—charts the process by which McCune’s romantic delusions led to her descent into the hell of Africa’s longest-running civil war. Emma’s War is at once a disturbing love story and an up-close look at Sudan: a world where international aid fuels armies as well as the starving population, and where the northern-based Islamic government—backed by Osama bin Laden—is locked in a war with the Christian and pagan south over religion, oil, and slaves. A timely, revelatory account of the nature of relief work, of the men and women who choose to carry it out, and of one woman’s sacrifice to its ideals.

This methods book is theoretically informed but practical in approach, and reflects the challenges and concerns of contemporary ethnography in North America. The authors emphasize an inductive, ethnographic approach to research. Each chapter offers an overview of a particular method, methodological issue, or research trend, followed by an extended ethnographic vignette--written exclusively for this volume--by contemporary anthropologists about their fieldwork experiences. These highly readable vignettes showcase how ethnography informs contemporary anthropological theory, offering a unique way to discuss major concepts, methods, and methodologies. "Try This" and "Possible Projects" sections encourage newcomers to anthropology to apply what they have learned in their own ethnographic experiences.

Parallel with the previous volume of conference papers in 2008, Sudan’s Wars and Peace Agreements, most of these selected and thematic articles were originally presented as papers at the 31st meeting of the Sudan Studies Association (SSA) at Arizona State University in 2012. Since that time, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 provided for the self-determination referendum of 2011 that resulted in the independence of the new Republic of South Sudan. The previous book presaged this present volume as the, perhaps inevitable, outcome of endless conflicts with no serious effort to “make unity attractive.” As this book goes to press, the new Republic of South Sudan is itself wracked with violent conflict. The hopes to build a new, democratic and civil society in the south from the many inherited problems have now devolved to dysfunction itself. Reading this book will realistically help in understanding these “Roads” taken. The editors and authors have created a multi-faceted account which reveals the complex foundations of these conflicts between north and south, and recently within the south itself. While Khartoum struggles onward with the Islamist project, regional conflicts and grave economic problems, Juba stumbles with corruption, armed rebellion and a grave humanitarian crisis. The half-full glass of dreams of social and economic development supported by oil revenue has been replaced by a glass half empty with new varieties of political dysfunction in which both nations have grave problems in security and economic stability in a generally troubled regional “neighborhood.”

As a foreign correspondent, Scott Peterson witnessed firsthand Somalia's descent into war and its battle against US troops, the spiritual degeneration of Sudan's Holy War, and one of the most horrific events of the last half century: the genocide in Rwanda. In Me Against My Brother, he brings these events together for the first time to record a collapse that has had an impact far beyond African borders.In Somalia, Peterson tells of harrowing experiences of clan conflict, guns and starvation. He met with warlords, observed death intimately and nearly lost his own life to a Somali mob. From ground level, he documents how the US-UN relief mission devolved into all out war - one that for America has proven to be the most formative post-Cold War debacle. In Sudan, he journeys where few correspondents have ever been, on both sides of that religious front line, to find that outside "relief" has only prolonged war. In Rwanda, his first-person experience of the genocide and well-documented analysis provide rare insight into this human tragedy.Filled with the dust, sweat and powerful detail of real-life, Me Against My Brother graphically illustrates how preventive action and a better understanding of Africa - especially by the US - could have averted much suffering. Also includes a 16-page color insert.

Living Without Domination defends the bold claim that humans can organise themselves to live peacefully and prosperously together in an anarchist utopia. Clark refutes errors about what anarchism is, about utopianism, and about human sociability and its history. He then develops an analysis of natural human social activity which places anarchy in the real landscape of sociability, along with more familiar possibilities including states and slavery. The book is distinctive in bringing the rigour of analytic political philosophy to anarchism, which is all too often dismissed out of hand or skated over in popular history.