Cherry Leonardi
Biographic Data
| ID | 77429 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cherry Leonardi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cherry |
| FAMILY NAME | Leonardi |
| SIGNATURE | LEONARDI C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9172-7819 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 88 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Exploring Elephants in European Hunting Narratives from Nineteenth-Century Southern Sudan
European accounts of elephant-hunting in nineteenth-century Africa have been primarily used by historians to explore the construction of the idealized male imperial hero and his increasingly monstrous elephant-foe. This paper asks what happens, however, if we see the elephants in such sources not only as symbolic representations but as living creatures with the capacity to communicate across species. Undoubtedly, the elephants who appeared in nin…
Extraordinarily Inconspicuous” Elephants: The Interspecies Constitution and Contestations of the Ivory Commodity Frontier in Nineteenth-Century South Sudan
Elephants have been extraordinarily inconspicuous in the history of the ivory trade in nineteenth-century southern Sudan. One explanation for this is the process of commodification, which abstracted ivory from its animal origins and rendered invisible both elephants and the indigenous knowledge and labor that was vital to the trade. However, this process of commodification was incomplete, unstable, and fundamentally shaped by the relations of ele…
Geographies of unease: Witchcraft and boundary construction in an African borderland
African borderlands – such as those between South Sudan, Uganda and Congo – are often presented by analysts as places of agency and economic opportunity, in contrast to hardened, securitized borders elsewhere. We emphasize, however, that even such relatively porous international borders can nevertheless be the focus of significant unease for borderland communities. Crossing borders can enable safety for those fleeing conflict or trading prospects…
Insecurity and the invisible: The challenge of spiritual (in)security
The search for security has become an almost permanent feature of the contemporary lived experience and what Brian Massumi has called an ‘operative logic’ for states across the globe. The modern study – and practice – of security has, nonetheless, been largely concerned with the protection, preservation and sustaining of the material, the tangible and the visible. For many people around the world, however, feelings of security also derive from un…
Patchwork States: The Localization of State Territoriality on the South Sudan-Uganda Border, 1914-2014
This paper takes a localized conflict over a non-demarcated stretch of the Uganda-South Sudan boundary in 2014 as a starting point for examining the history of territorial state formation on either side of this border since its colonial creation in 1914. It argues that the conflict was an outcome of the long-term constitution of local government territories as patches of the state, making the international border simultaneously a boundary of the …
Introduction: Valuing land in Eastern Africa
Points of order? Local government meetings as negotiation tables in South Sudanese history
This paper explores the long-term, local-level history of state formation in South Sudan over the past century, by focusing on local government meetings. The resilience of local state institutions and practices has been overlooked in recent state-building agendas and by scholars critical of authoritarian government and failed decentralization in South Sudan's history. But this paper argues that meetings of local government officials and chiefs ha…
Discourses of violence in the transition from colonialism to independence in southern Sudan, 1955-1960
The Torit Mutiny of August 1955 in southern Sudan did not trigger a civil war, but state violence and disorder escalated over the following years. We explore how the outlook and strategies of the government officials who inherited the state apparatus of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium contributed to this development. They perpetuated authoritarian and violent government practices based on a legalistic distinction between citizen and outlaw, while …
Dealing with Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State
South Sudan became Africa's newest nation in 2011, following decades of armed conflict. Chiefs - or 'traditional authorities' - became a particular focus of attention during the international relief effort and post-war reconstruction and state-building. But 'traditional' authority in South Sudan has been much misunderstood. Institutions of chiefship were created during the colonial period but originated out of a much longer process of dealing wit…
South Sudanese Arabic and the Negotiation of the Local State, C . 1840–2011
This article explores the history of the creole South Sudanese Arabic language from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It analyses the historical evidence of language use in the light of insights drawn from linguistic studies of creolisation to argue that South Sudanese Arabic became an innovative and necessary means of communication among multiple actors within new fields of interaction. The article argues that these fields of intera…
The Politics of Customary Law Ascertainment in South Sudan
This article focuses on a strategy produced by the Government of Southern Sudan and the UNDP in 2009 for a written ascertainment of customary law. It argues that this strategy reflected a legalistic desire to regulate and order the hybrid, composite practices and laws of the local courts and to ensure certainty, predictability and substantive requirements such as equality and due process. Based on empirical research into local justice in 2009-10,…
Paying 'buckets of blood' for the land: Moral debates over economy, war and state in Southern Sudan
This paper challenges the prevailing focus on ethnic division and conflict in Southern Sudan in recent years, demonstrating that even within ethnically divisive debates over land, there are shared, transethnic levels of moral concern. These concerns centre on the commodification and monetisation of rural and kinship resources, including human life itself, epitomised in ideas of land being bought with blood, or blood being turned into money by the…
Civilizing women: British crusades in colonial Sudan - By Janice Boddy
The Nile in Darkness: A flawed unity, 1863–1899 (review)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Liberation’ or capture: Youth in between ‘hakuma’, and ‘home’ during civil war and its aftermath in Southern Sudan
Generational tension and youth crisis have been prominent themes in recent analyses of civil conflict in Africa. Field research in Southern Sudan in 2004–2006 suggests that the analysis does not fit the Sudanese war. This article examines a structural opposition between the sphere of military/government (the ‘hakuma’) and the sphere of ‘home’. It argues that to be a ‘youth’ in Southern Sudan means to inhabit the tensions of the space between thes…
Violence, Sacrifice and Chiefship in Central Equatoria, Southern Sudan
This article explores specific oral histories and chiefship debates in the aftermath of the SPLA war in two Southern Sudanese chiefdoms. It argues that these local histories reveal much about the historical relationship between state and society - and in particular the mediation with external violence - which is central to understanding the legitimacy of local authority. Rather than being the strong arm of the state, chiefs have ideally mediated …
The Poison in the Ink Bottle: Poison Cases and the Moral Economy of Knowledge in 1930s Equatoria, Sudan
Poison cases - in which people are accused of deliberately administering a toxic substance in food or drink or by touch - have long posed a problem for the government judicial system in Central Equatoria. Although poisoning is potentially provable in court on the basis of a material substance, it also transgresses the boundary between occult practice and 'real' criminality. The recent revival in the study of African witchcraft has circumvented th…
Laying the First Course of Stones: Building the London Missionary Society Church in Madagascar, 1862-1895
Cherry Leonardi, Laying the First Course of Stones: Building the London Missionary Society Church in Madagascar, 1862-1895, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2003), pp. 607-633
Paying 'buckets of blood' for the land: Moral debates over economy, war and state in Southern Sudan
This paper challenges the prevailing focus on ethnic division and conflict in Southern Sudan in recent years, demonstrating that even within ethnically divisive debates over land, there are shared, transethnic levels of moral concern. These concerns centre on the commodification and monetisation of rural and kinship resources, including human life itself, epitomised in ideas of land being bought with blood, or blood being turned into money by the…
Violence, Sacrifice and Chiefship in Central Equatoria, Southern Sudan
This article explores specific oral histories and chiefship debates in the aftermath of the SPLA war in two Southern Sudanese chiefdoms. It argues that these local histories reveal much about the historical relationship between state and society - and in particular the mediation with external violence - which is central to understanding the legitimacy of local authority. Rather than being the strong arm of the state, chiefs have ideally mediated …
Liberation’ or capture: Youth in between ‘hakuma’, and ‘home’ during civil war and its aftermath in Southern Sudan
Generational tension and youth crisis have been prominent themes in recent analyses of civil conflict in Africa. Field research in Southern Sudan in 2004–2006 suggests that the analysis does not fit the Sudanese war. This article examines a structural opposition between the sphere of military/government (the ‘hakuma’) and the sphere of ‘home’. It argues that to be a ‘youth’ in Southern Sudan means to inhabit the tensions of the space between thes…
The Poison in the Ink Bottle: Poison Cases and the Moral Economy of Knowledge in 1930s Equatoria, Sudan
Poison cases - in which people are accused of deliberately administering a toxic substance in food or drink or by touch - have long posed a problem for the government judicial system in Central Equatoria. Although poisoning is potentially provable in court on the basis of a material substance, it also transgresses the boundary between occult practice and 'real' criminality. The recent revival in the study of African witchcraft has circumvented th…
Discourses of violence in the transition from colonialism to independence in southern Sudan, 1955-1960
The Torit Mutiny of August 1955 in southern Sudan did not trigger a civil war, but state violence and disorder escalated over the following years. We explore how the outlook and strategies of the government officials who inherited the state apparatus of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium contributed to this development. They perpetuated authoritarian and violent government practices based on a legalistic distinction between citizen and outlaw, while …
Patchwork States: The Localization of State Territoriality on the South Sudan-Uganda Border, 1914-2014
This paper takes a localized conflict over a non-demarcated stretch of the Uganda-South Sudan boundary in 2014 as a starting point for examining the history of territorial state formation on either side of this border since its colonial creation in 1914. It argues that the conflict was an outcome of the long-term constitution of local government territories as patches of the state, making the international border simultaneously a boundary of the …
Insecurity and the invisible: The challenge of spiritual (in)security
The search for security has become an almost permanent feature of the contemporary lived experience and what Brian Massumi has called an ‘operative logic’ for states across the globe. The modern study – and practice – of security has, nonetheless, been largely concerned with the protection, preservation and sustaining of the material, the tangible and the visible. For many people around the world, however, feelings of security also derive from un…
Points of order? Local government meetings as negotiation tables in South Sudanese history
This paper explores the long-term, local-level history of state formation in South Sudan over the past century, by focusing on local government meetings. The resilience of local state institutions and practices has been overlooked in recent state-building agendas and by scholars critical of authoritarian government and failed decentralization in South Sudan's history. But this paper argues that meetings of local government officials and chiefs ha…
Geographies of unease: Witchcraft and boundary construction in an African borderland
African borderlands – such as those between South Sudan, Uganda and Congo – are often presented by analysts as places of agency and economic opportunity, in contrast to hardened, securitized borders elsewhere. We emphasize, however, that even such relatively porous international borders can nevertheless be the focus of significant unease for borderland communities. Crossing borders can enable safety for those fleeing conflict or trading prospects…
South Sudanese Arabic and the Negotiation of the Local State, C . 1840–2011
This article explores the history of the creole South Sudanese Arabic language from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It analyses the historical evidence of language use in the light of insights drawn from linguistic studies of creolisation to argue that South Sudanese Arabic became an innovative and necessary means of communication among multiple actors within new fields of interaction. The article argues that these fields of intera…
Introduction: Valuing land in Eastern Africa
Extraordinarily Inconspicuous” Elephants: The Interspecies Constitution and Contestations of the Ivory Commodity Frontier in Nineteenth-Century South Sudan
Elephants have been extraordinarily inconspicuous in the history of the ivory trade in nineteenth-century southern Sudan. One explanation for this is the process of commodification, which abstracted ivory from its animal origins and rendered invisible both elephants and the indigenous knowledge and labor that was vital to the trade. However, this process of commodification was incomplete, unstable, and fundamentally shaped by the relations of ele…
Laying the First Course of Stones: Building the London Missionary Society Church in Madagascar, 1862-1895
Cherry Leonardi, Laying the First Course of Stones: Building the London Missionary Society Church in Madagascar, 1862-1895, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2003), pp. 607-633
The Nile in Darkness: A flawed unity, 1863–1899 (review)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Liberation’ or capture: Youth in between ‘hakuma’, and ‘home’ during civil war and its aftermath in Southern Sudan
Generational tension and youth crisis have been prominent themes in recent analyses of civil conflict in Africa. Field research in Southern Sudan in 2004–2006 suggests that the analysis does not fit the Sudanese war. This article examines a structural opposition between the sphere of military/government (the ‘hakuma’) and the sphere of ‘home’. It argues that to be a ‘youth’ in Southern Sudan means to inhabit the tensions of the space between thes…
Violence, Sacrifice and Chiefship in Central Equatoria, Southern Sudan
This article explores specific oral histories and chiefship debates in the aftermath of the SPLA war in two Southern Sudanese chiefdoms. It argues that these local histories reveal much about the historical relationship between state and society - and in particular the mediation with external violence - which is central to understanding the legitimacy of local authority. Rather than being the strong arm of the state, chiefs have ideally mediated …
The Poison in the Ink Bottle: Poison Cases and the Moral Economy of Knowledge in 1930s Equatoria, Sudan
Poison cases - in which people are accused of deliberately administering a toxic substance in food or drink or by touch - have long posed a problem for the government judicial system in Central Equatoria. Although poisoning is potentially provable in court on the basis of a material substance, it also transgresses the boundary between occult practice and 'real' criminality. The recent revival in the study of African witchcraft has circumvented th…
Civilizing women: British crusades in colonial Sudan - By Janice Boddy
The Politics of Customary Law Ascertainment in South Sudan
This article focuses on a strategy produced by the Government of Southern Sudan and the UNDP in 2009 for a written ascertainment of customary law. It argues that this strategy reflected a legalistic desire to regulate and order the hybrid, composite practices and laws of the local courts and to ensure certainty, predictability and substantive requirements such as equality and due process. Based on empirical research into local justice in 2009-10,…
Paying 'buckets of blood' for the land: Moral debates over economy, war and state in Southern Sudan
This paper challenges the prevailing focus on ethnic division and conflict in Southern Sudan in recent years, demonstrating that even within ethnically divisive debates over land, there are shared, transethnic levels of moral concern. These concerns centre on the commodification and monetisation of rural and kinship resources, including human life itself, epitomised in ideas of land being bought with blood, or blood being turned into money by the…
Dealing with Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State
South Sudan became Africa's newest nation in 2011, following decades of armed conflict. Chiefs - or 'traditional authorities' - became a particular focus of attention during the international relief effort and post-war reconstruction and state-building. But 'traditional' authority in South Sudan has been much misunderstood. Institutions of chiefship were created during the colonial period but originated out of a much longer process of dealing wit…
South Sudanese Arabic and the Negotiation of the Local State, C . 1840–2011
This article explores the history of the creole South Sudanese Arabic language from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It analyses the historical evidence of language use in the light of insights drawn from linguistic studies of creolisation to argue that South Sudanese Arabic became an innovative and necessary means of communication among multiple actors within new fields of interaction. The article argues that these fields of intera…
Discourses of violence in the transition from colonialism to independence in southern Sudan, 1955-1960
The Torit Mutiny of August 1955 in southern Sudan did not trigger a civil war, but state violence and disorder escalated over the following years. We explore how the outlook and strategies of the government officials who inherited the state apparatus of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium contributed to this development. They perpetuated authoritarian and violent government practices based on a legalistic distinction between citizen and outlaw, while …
Points of order? Local government meetings as negotiation tables in South Sudanese history
This paper explores the long-term, local-level history of state formation in South Sudan over the past century, by focusing on local government meetings. The resilience of local state institutions and practices has been overlooked in recent state-building agendas and by scholars critical of authoritarian government and failed decentralization in South Sudan's history. But this paper argues that meetings of local government officials and chiefs ha…
Introduction: Valuing land in Eastern Africa
Insecurity and the invisible: The challenge of spiritual (in)security
The search for security has become an almost permanent feature of the contemporary lived experience and what Brian Massumi has called an ‘operative logic’ for states across the globe. The modern study – and practice – of security has, nonetheless, been largely concerned with the protection, preservation and sustaining of the material, the tangible and the visible. For many people around the world, however, feelings of security also derive from un…
Patchwork States: The Localization of State Territoriality on the South Sudan-Uganda Border, 1914-2014
This paper takes a localized conflict over a non-demarcated stretch of the Uganda-South Sudan boundary in 2014 as a starting point for examining the history of territorial state formation on either side of this border since its colonial creation in 1914. It argues that the conflict was an outcome of the long-term constitution of local government territories as patches of the state, making the international border simultaneously a boundary of the …
Geographies of unease: Witchcraft and boundary construction in an African borderland
African borderlands – such as those between South Sudan, Uganda and Congo – are often presented by analysts as places of agency and economic opportunity, in contrast to hardened, securitized borders elsewhere. We emphasize, however, that even such relatively porous international borders can nevertheless be the focus of significant unease for borderland communities. Crossing borders can enable safety for those fleeing conflict or trading prospects…
Extraordinarily Inconspicuous” Elephants: The Interspecies Constitution and Contestations of the Ivory Commodity Frontier in Nineteenth-Century South Sudan
Elephants have been extraordinarily inconspicuous in the history of the ivory trade in nineteenth-century southern Sudan. One explanation for this is the process of commodification, which abstracted ivory from its animal origins and rendered invisible both elephants and the indigenous knowledge and labor that was vital to the trade. However, this process of commodification was incomplete, unstable, and fundamentally shaped by the relations of ele…
Exploring Elephants in European Hunting Narratives from Nineteenth-Century Southern Sudan
European accounts of elephant-hunting in nineteenth-century Africa have been primarily used by historians to explore the construction of the idealized male imperial hero and his increasingly monstrous elephant-foe. This paper asks what happens, however, if we see the elephants in such sources not only as symbolic representations but as living creatures with the capacity to communicate across species. Undoubtedly, the elephants who appeared in nin…
Political science (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (11 works) · African history and culture studies (10 works) · State (computer science (8 works) · History (7 works) · History (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Government (linguistics (6 works)