Leiden University Scholarly Publications

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Braak, B.J. (2022)

Overcoming ruptures: Zande identity, governance, and tradition during cycles of war and displacement in South Sudan and Uganda (2014-2019)

Doctoral Thesis
This book explores the effects of war and displacement on the South Sudanese Zande, a people frozen in time by the classical anthropology of Edgar Evans-Pritchard. The research started in Western Equatoria State, South Sudan, at a time of hopeful reconstruction (2014-2015). Yet after war resumed in 2015, nearly a million South Sudanese refugees fled to neighbouring Uganda – and so the study continues with South Sudanese Zande refugees there (2015-2019). Based on hundreds of inter views with refugees and stayees, chiefs and elder s, government officials and former combatants, and ordinary people, this book places conflict, confusion, and the search for continuity at the heart of the historical ethnography of the South Sudanese Zande. The book focuses on the ties between people, between people and land, and the competing efforts to control those ties. These three foci relate to proto-legal questions that underpin human society: Who are we? To whom and where do we belong? And whose...Show moreThis book explores the effects of war and displacement on the South Sudanese Zande, a people frozen in time by the classical anthropology of Edgar Evans-Pritchard. The research started in Western Equatoria State, South Sudan, at a time of hopeful reconstruction (2014-2015). Yet after war resumed in 2015, nearly a million South Sudanese refugees fled to neighbouring Uganda – and so the study continues with South Sudanese Zande refugees there (2015-2019). Based on hundreds of inter views with refugees and stayees, chiefs and elder s, government officials and former combatants, and ordinary people, this book places conflict, confusion, and the search for continuity at the heart of the historical ethnography of the South Sudanese Zande. The book focuses on the ties between people, between people and land, and the competing efforts to control those ties. These three foci relate to proto-legal questions that underpin human society: Who are we? To whom and where do we belong? And whose authority do we accept? This study shows that these foundational questions gain new salience in times of crisis, as people turn to nostalgia and utopia to escape present despair.
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War
Displacement
Refugees
South Sudan
Uganda
Zande
Traditional authority
Peace and conflict studies
Cultural anthropology
Evans-Pritchard
All authors
Braak, B.J.
Supervisor
Otto, J.M.
Co-supervisor
Jacobs, C.I.M.; Leonardi, C.
Committee
Hammond, L.; Shipton, P.; Ubink, J.M.; Justin, P.H.; Vries, L.A. de
Qualification
Doctor (dr.)
Awarding Institution
Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of the Law, Faculty of Law, Leiden University
Date
2022-06-01
Title of host publication
Meijers-reeks

Publication Series

Name
MI-390

Funding

Sponsorship
Parts of the research for this PhD thesis were funded by: 1) the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law; 2) the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs through the Rift Valley Institute; and 3) the Rockefeller Foundation through the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa.