RELIGION IN TRANSFORMING AFRICA

Naomi Ruth Pendle

ISSN 2398-8673

Series Editors

Barbara Bompani, Joseph Hellweg, Ousmane Kane and Emma Wild-Wood

Editorial Reading Panel

Robert Baum (Dartmouth College)

Dianna Bell (University of Cape Town)

Ezra Chitando (University of Zimbabwe)

Martha Frederiks (Utrecht University)

Paul Gifford (SOAS)

David M. Gordon (Bowdoin College)

Jörg Haustein (University of Cambridge)

Paul Lubeck (Johns Hopkins University-SAIS)

Philomena Mwaura (Kenyatta University, Nairobi)

Hassan Ndzovu (Moi University)

Ebenezer Obadare (University of Kansas)

Abdulkader I. Tayob (University of Cape Town)

M. Sani Umar (Northwestern University)

Stephen Wooten (University of Oregon)

Series description

The series is open to submissions that examine local or regional realities on the complexities of religion and spirituality in Africa. Religion in Transforming Africa will showcase cutting-edge research into continent-wide issues on Christianity, Islam and other religions of Africa; Traditional beliefs and witchcraft; Religion, culture and society; History of religion, politics and power; Global networks and new missions; Religion in conflict and peace-building processes; Religion and development; Religious rituals and texts and their role in shaping religious ideologies and theologies. Innovative, and challenging current perspectives, the series provides an indispensable resource on this key area of African Studies for academics, students, international policy-makers and development practitioners.

Please contact the Series Editors with an outline or download the proposal form at www.jamescurrey.com.

Dr Barbara Bompani, Reader in Africa and International Development, University of Edinburgh: b.bompani@ed.ac.uk

Dr Joseph Hellweg, Associate Professor of Religion, Department of Religion, Florida State University: jhellweg@fsu.edu

Professor Ousmane Kane, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion & Society, Harvard Divinity School: okane@hds.harvard.edu

Professor Emma Wild-Wood, Professor of African Religions and World Christianity, University of Edinburgh: emma.wildwood@ed.ac.uk

Previously published titles in the series are listed at the back of this volume.

Details

Spiritual Contestations – The Violence of Peace in South Sudan

Stable URL:https://openaccess.boydellandbrewercms.com/?id=-257132

Open Access license

A fresh perspective on conflict and peace-making that highlights the cosmologies and invisible entities that state, society and religious authorities draw on to claim or reclaim legitimacy and control.

Peace-making can be a violent, arbitrary assertion of power. At the same time, the spheres of power, politics and religion are rarely discrete: when governments behave like gods through demonstrations of arbitrary violence, the remaking of moral and spiritual worlds can provide radical ways to contest the brutality of both conflict and peace. This book is an exploration of the way that Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities living around the Bilnyang and connected river systems in Warrap and Unity States in South Sudan have experienced peace-making and conflict in an increasingly militarized South Sudan. The book traces patterns of violence in peace-making back to colonial and mercantile activities in the late 19th century, but focuses on the period since the 1980s. Challenging dominant understandings of conflict and peace centred on neo-liberal brokerage and settlements or a politics entirely driven by instrumentalist, neo-patrimonial, marketized logics, this book shows how South Sudanese authorities, particularly religious authorities, have contested the legitimacy of violence and peace by drawing on divinely inspired notions of authority and norms of conduct. Drawing on archive, ethnographic and oral history research, as well as participant observations of the elite peace negotiations since 2013, Pendle describes the peace-making efforts of a range of actors from international diplomats to chiefs, Nuer prophets and local priests, to show how peace-making in South Sudan became an instrument used by actors to build authority by reshaping rituals, remaking hierarchies and re-encoding moral protest against oppressive regimes. By recasting anthropological and historical scholarship on divine authorities and moral communities in South Sudan, this book brings a new perspective to conflict, peace and governance that will be invaluable not only to scholars but to policymakers, practitioners and NGOs.
This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.

Author

Naomi Ruth Pendle

PublisherJames Currey

Print publication date Apr, 2023

Print ISBN 9781847013385

EISBN 9781800106581

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RELIGION IN TRANSFORMING AFRICA

Spiritual Contestations – The Violence of Peace in South Sudan

Chapter illustrations ()