Social Science Research Council

War and Survival in Sudan’s Frontierlands: Voices from the Blue Nile, by Wendy James, is now available in paperback. We reprint the review from its earlier (hardback) publication.

Wendy James’s three books on the Uduk people of southern Blue Nile, a frontier area of northern Sudan that abuts both southern Sudan and Ethiopia, describe not only [...]

A new volume examines climate and ecological changes in Sub-Saharan Africa, and how these relate to conflicts on the continent. Particular attention is paid to environmental and livelihood aspects of the crisis in Darfur. Conclusions are drawn regarding peace-building in areas facing resource constraints.

The book includes research conducted in-house at UPEACE Africa in Addis Ababa [...]

I would like to address Jeff Howell’s comments, posted on September 28, 2009 to Annette Jansen’s posting: “Drawn by Disasters: Why the Human Rights Movement Struggles with Good News Stories.”

Mr. Howell states that the report cited by Ms. Jansen terminated in 2002. He also wrote: “It would be interesting to know what those figures [...]

Activist and Apologist: Contrasts and Parallels
This section uses techniques of textual and discourse analysis to examine two leading books on the Darfur crisis, identifying the strategies employed by the respective writers. One is by Prof. Eric Reeves the leading anti-genocide campaigner and the other is a defense of the Sudanese government by David Hoile. This [...]

The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo is often called the world’s most deadly since Korea. Perhaps if the long liberation wars in Ethiopia and Eritrea (1975-91 and 1961-91) respectively were fully assessed, the verdict might be different. In any case, it is salutary to recall just how bloody the fighting was in Ethiopia [...]

Everyone supports “uniform, complete, and balanced across all tribal and ethnic groups.” People are unanimous that they “want peace and they see disarmament as the best way to end the insecurity.”
These statements are true in Darfur. But the quotations are from a report on Karamoja in north-east Uganda, where for the last three [...]

Alex de Waal provides a much more coherent summary of my book The Right to Rule than I could have. I am glad that he picked up one of the core implicit messages of the book, namely an optimism about the possibilities of political action and an escape from political crisis. Political history is littered [...]

Legitimacy lurks in much political science writing but—like an invisible life force—is rarely scrutinized. What is this elusive thing? Can it be reduced to something else that political scientists are more familiar with dissecting and measuring? And what might this imply for real political choices?

Bruce Gilley’s The Right to Rule: How States Win and Lose [...]

Mahmood Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror, is the most ambitious book yet on the Darfur crisis. Unlike the vast majority of other writing on the crisis, which is political science, human rights or ethnographic narrative, specific to the Darfurian or the Sudanese situation, Mamdani places Darfur in deep and [...]

The cover of Paul Collier’s new book, Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places (Harper Collins, 2009) is graced by a picture of Darfurian rebels. It is apt. Although the book says little specifically on Darfur–or indeed Sudan–the whole argument is highly relevant to the Sudanese predicament, and especially the 2010 elections.

Collier problematizes the [...]