Borders Are Galaxies
Interpreting Contestations Over Local Administrative Boundaries in South Sudan
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2103162 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Zoe Cormack (0000-0002-1794-4775, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 504-527 |
| Publication date | 2016-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0001972016000358 |
| OpenAlex | W2464556189 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
| References cited | 44 |
This article explores conflicts over local administrative boundaries in South Sudan and what these reveal about relationships between pastoralist communities and the state. Drawing on research in the Gogrial region of South Sudan, it argues that conflicts over local boundaries are rooted in the existence of different border paradigms and in subsequent attempts to resolve, sometimes violently, competing moral claims on the landscape. It draws a contrast between a Dinka concept of the border as a point that is owned and the state's concept of the border as a neutral dividing line. These concepts are based on different cultural logics, but there has been a century of interpenetration as well as conflict between them. The state has tried to lay its lines over Dinka points and local people have sought to tap the power of the state by claiming authority at administrative boundaries. These complex processes of interpenetration show how rural populations negotiate with violent state power: both in the past and in the process of forming the new state of South Sudan. They also reveal how some pastoralist populations have played an active role in shaping the geography of the state
Geography · Negotiation · Pastoralism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · State formation · Animal Diversity and Health Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Transboundary Water Resource Management
The changing value of land in Northern Kenya
Power and influence in post-secession South Sudan
Governing Unclear Lines
Competing authorities and norms of restraint
On power and policy in post-colonial Africa
Interactions between territorial partitioning, indigeneity crises, and farmer-pastoralist conflicts in the Benue-Nasarawa region
Play, childhood, and playthings in Bor, South Sudan, 2009-2010
Dodgy Paperwork and Theories of Citizenship on the Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan Borders
Law and Famine
Buffering State-making
Contesting the militarization of the places where they met
International chiefs
Small arms and conflict among East African pastoralists
Livestock mobility and the territorial state
Rural Radicalism in the Capital City
We Are Not a Failed State, We Make the Best Passports
Pagan tribes of the Nilotic Sudan
Managing Mobility in African Rangelands
Moving the Maasai
The Galactic Polity
Anthropology in the margins of the state
Fortress Conservation
Nuer Dilemmas
States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control
Warfare in Independent Africa
The Sudan
Managing mobility in African Rangelands. The legitimization of transhumance
The gadzingo
Shadows in the Grass
Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa
Clean’ and ‘Dirty’
Violence, Authority, and the State in the Nuba Mountains of Condominium Sudan
When the North Winds Blow
Briefing
Africans of Two Worlds
Guns, land, and votes
Africa's new big man rule? Pentecostalism and patronage in Ghana
Experts and Expertise in Colonial Africa Reconsidered
Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of Invention in British Colonial Africa
Tribal Boundaries and Border Wars
Eroding the Commons
Shadows in the Grass
The Jonglei Canal
Pastoralism
Citizen and Subject
Lines
Wars Without End
The Eroding Commons
"A "hardening of lines
| Unique citing works | 16 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,6 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |