LIFE IS PRICKLY. NARRATING HISTORY, BELONGING, AND COMMON PLACE IN BOR, SOUTH SUDAN

Abstract

An ethnography based on research carried out between 2009 and 2010 in the vicinity of Bor Town, the capital of Jonglei State, in what was then Southern Sudan, this dissertation is primarily concerned with people's reflections on making agreements with one another during a period when the nature of belonging was being publically discussed and redefined. It examines historical narratives and discussions about how people ought to relate to the past and to each other in the changed circumstances following the formal cessation of hostilities between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in 2005. This dissertation departs from much of the literature on Southern Sudan by focusing on the common place, the nature of promises and ordinary talk, as opposed to state failure and armed conflict. After 21 years of multiple and overlapping conflicts in Sudan, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in January of 2005. The agreement stipulated national elections during a six-year Interim Period, at the end of which, the people of Southern Sudan were to hold a referendum on self-determination to decide whether to remain united with Sudan or to secede. This dissertation examines questions where were on many people's minds during Sudan's national elections and the run-up to the referendum, a time when questions of history, belonging, and place were very salient. The dissertation begins with a discussion of jokes and other narratives in order to sketch out some popular attitudes toward speech, responsibility and commitments. Most of the body of the dissertation is concerned with everyday talk about the past and with sketching out the background necessary to understand the stakes at play in discussions about citizenship and the definition of a South Sudanese citizen: Did it depend upon one's genealogy or one's place of birth, or one's commitments to a particular place, or their having simply suffered there with others?