A comprehensive history of the indigenous people of Sudan based on interviews and local genealogies, first published in 1922.

The Darfur conflict exploded in early 2003 when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, struck national military installations in Darfur to send a hard-hitting message of resentment over the region’s political and economic marginalization. The conflict devastated the region’s economy, shredded its fragile social fabric, and drove millions of people from their homes. Darfur Allegory is a dispatch from the humanitarian crisis that explains the historical and ethnographic background to competing narratives that have informed international responses. At the heart of the book is Sudanese anthropologist Rogaia Abusharaf’s critique of the pseudoscientific notions of race and ethnicity that posit divisions between “Arab” northerners and “African” Darfuris. Elaborated in colonial times and enshrined in policy afterwards, such binary categories have been adopted by the media to explain the civil war in Darfur. The narratives that circulate internationally are thus highly fraught and cover over—to counterproductive effect—forms of Darfurian activism that have emerged in the conflict’s wake. Darfur Allegory marries the analytical precision of a committed anthropologist with an insider’s view of Sudanese politics at home and in the diaspora, laying bare the power of words to heal or perpetuate civil conflict.

This book combines important and often historic photographs with text to illustrate the value of photographs for the study of modern African history in general and of the Sudan, Africa's largest country and one of its most varied.

Most of the papers in this book were presented during the 9th International South Sudan and Sudan Studies Conference of the Sudan Studies Association USA and the Sudan Studies Society UK. 150 scholars from numerous academic disciplines, experts in conflict transformation and development, staff of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), former and current senior officers from ministries and military institutions from Sudan, South Sudan, and seventeen further countries participated in the conference. They engaged in vivid discussions on historical and recent cleavages in the societies of Sudan and South Sudan, inequality and exclusion in numerous variations, and on rapid social change accompanied by urbanisation and land conflicts. The severe economic crisis following the separation and the importance of creating political solutions instead of using technical approaches to work on the multitude of challenges affecting each of the two countries and the interrelations between them were also scrutinised. The participants intensely exchanged views and experiences on the difficulties and successes in taking responsibility rather than being dependent on foreign assistance. Discussions revealed strong potentials in both societies to overcome such problems; to initiate processes of reconciliation, and to consolidate peace. They shed light on the complex processes of nation-building and the creation of meaningful constitutions. This book attempts to capture at least some of this multitude of insights and aspects that had shaped the conference.