86 the sudan handbookMigration and NationA survey of the peoples of Sudan such as is offered here, and the glimpses
it provides of the histories that have shaped the social categories through
which they exist, can provide only a bare indication of the lived experience
of language and culture. The story of Sudanese people – as of people in
most times and places – is one of movement: of expansion, contraction,
displacement, migration, and sometimes decimation. At the individual
and group level Sudanese still survive largely by moving: they may move
seasonally for grazing, for work, or for education, unseasonally to escape
war and famine. Increasingly also, they are likely to migrate permanently
from rural to urban areas. The towns and cities of Sudan have grown
rapidly: first, Greater Khartoum and, more recently, former provincial
centres such as Nyala and Juba, the latter now the burgeoning capital
of South Sudan. Villages become suburbs or slums; villagers become
townsfolk.
The displaced and migrant populations of Sudan are sustained, as they
have always been, by kin-based affinities. But kinship takes its place in
an expanding set of social bonds, of personal loyalties and patron-client
relationships. Individual Sudanese, like others, negotiate overlapping
identities in the realms of ethnicity, language, religion and professional
roles, adapting to circumstances, invoking collective histories and
acquiring new social repertoires as required for survival. Indigenous
languages are likely to be a casualty of the large-scale movement of
people and accompanying social changes. In the era of two Sudans, the
challenge remains: to widen the moral community to include all citizens
and all dimensions of the cultures they inhabit. This is a vision of nation-
hood that has yet to find consistent political expression, either in the
north or in the south.Recommended Reading
Asad, Talal. The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe.
London: Hurst, 1970.
Cunnison, Ian. The Baggara Arabs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors
(www.riftvalley.net).