Northern Sudanese Research Articles

Three-dimensional facial distances of Northern Sudanese persons from childhood to young adulthood

No current age- and gender-related normative data exist for the dimensions of facial structures in Northern Sudanese subjects. In the current study information about normal sex- and age-related linear distances is provided. The three-dimensional coordinates of 14 landmarks on the facial soft tissues were obtained using a hand-held laser scanner in 653 healthy Northern Sudanese subjects (326 males and 327 females) aged 4–30 years. From the landmarks, 13 linear distances were calculated, and averaged for age and sex. Comparisons were performed by factorial analysis of variance. All analyzed linear soft tissue facial dimensions were significantly larger in men than in women (p < 0.01), except mouth width (ch-ch), upper facial height (n-sn), mandibular body length (pg-go) and width (go-go). All measurements underwent significant modifications as a function of age (p < 0.01), with significant age × sex interactions (p < 0.01) for all linear dimensions except lower face height (sn-pg). Overall, when compared to literature data for African and Caucasoid subjects, several differences were found, pointing to the necessity of ethnic-specific data. Data collected in the present investigation could serve as a database for the quantitative description of human facial morphology during normal growth and development.

Regular consumption of Nile river fish could ameliorate the low milk DHA of Southern Sudanese women living in Khartoum City area

We have reported that milk of Northern Sudanese women contained very low level of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). This was puzzling since the mothers were not malnourished and some had claimed to eat fish from time to time. War-displaced Southern Sudanese live in Khartoum City and its vicinity. They are distinct in genetic background and traditional dietary culture from the Northerners. Milk DHA is influenced by diet and ethnicity. Fatty acid content of Southern Sudanese milk, and six of the popular River Nile fish species were evaluated. Mature milk compared with transition milk had lower arachidonic (AA, 0.6±0.19 vs. 0.75±0.3; p<0.001), adrenic (0.14±0.1 vs. 0.33±0.23), osbond (0.07±0.05 vs. 0.14±0.08; p<0.0001), eicosapentaenoic (0.04±0.02 vs.0.08±0.07; p<0.01) and DHA (0.10±0.07 vs. 0.16±0.1; p=0.003) acids. The milk of the Southerners like their counterparts from the North had low DHA and total n-3 and high AA and total n-6 levels. Regular consumption of the local fish could provide adequate DHA to help enrich their milk.

Morphometry of the soft tissues of the orbital region in Northern Sudanese persons

The orbital region plays a predominant role in the evaluation of the craniofacial complex. No current normative data exist for Northern Sudanese subjects. In the current study information about normal sex- and age-related dimensions of the orbital region was provided. The three-dimensional coordinates of ten landmarks on the orbital soft tissues were obtained using a hand-held laser scanner in 654 healthy Northern Sudanese subjects aged 4–30 years. From the landmarks, biocular and intercanthal widths, paired height and inclination of the orbit relative to both the true horizontal (head in natural head position) and Frankfurt plane, length and inclination of the eye fissure, the relevant ratios, were calculated, and averaged for age and sex. Comparisons were performed by factorial analysis of variance. All analysed linear soft-tissue orbital dimensions, except intercanthal width and left orbital height, were significantly larger in men than in women (p<0.01). A significant sexual dimorphism was found also for the height-to-width ratios (larger in women in most age groups), the orbital inclinations vs. the true horizontal and Frankfurt plane (both measurements were almost always larger in men than in women), and the right side inclination of the eye fissure vs. the true horizontal (larger in women than in men), while no sex-related differences were observed for the left side inclination of the eye fissure vs. the true horizontal. All measurements but the right side inclination of the eye fissure vs. the true horizontal underwent significant modifications as a function of age, with several significant age×sex interactions. Biocular and intercanthal widths, orbital height, length of the eye fissure, all increased from childhood to young adulthood; in the second decade of life all age-related increments were larger in men than in women. Overall, when compared to literature data for African and Caucasoid subjects, several differences were found, pointing to the necessity of ethnic-specific data. Data collected in the present investigation could serve as a database for the quantitative description of human orbital morphology during normal growth and development. Forensic applications (evaluations of traumas, craniofacial alterations, teratogenic-induced conditions, facial reconstruction, ageing of living and dead people, personal identification) may also benefit from age- and sex-based data banks.

Dietary intake of Sudanese women

To determine the daily intake of essential micro- and macronutrients in Sudanese women, with specific focus on dietary fat and essential fatty acids, and compare the dietary intakes of internally displaced women with those of the non-displaced population. Dietary intakes of displaced southern (n=44) and non-displaced southern (n=30) and northern (n=39) Sudanese women were obtained by single 24-hour recall method, and daily nutrient intakes were calculated using 'Foodbase' nutritional software. The displaced women were recruited from Mayo and Soba Aradi camps, south of Khartoum city; and non-displaced southern and northern Sudanese women were recruited from antenatal clinics, universities, hospitals and the community in Khartoum city and Omdurman, Sudan. Carbohydrates provided over 60% of dietary energy for all the Sudanese women groups. The displaced women had significantly lower intake of energy (1744 ± 344 kcal/d), starch (p<0.001) and carbohydrates (312 ± 11 g/d, p<0.01) than both non-displaced southern (1972 ± 229 kcal/d energy, 358 ± 56 g/d carbohydrates) and northern Sudanese women (1988 ± 226 kcal/d energy, 357 ± 56g/d carbohydrates). Fat intake was also lower in the displaced group (34.1 ± 11.9 g/d) than in the non-displaced counterpart (38.5 ± 10.2 g/d) (p<0.05), but was not significantly different from northern Sudanese women (37.6 ± 10.6, p>0.05). Intakes of iodine (33.60-56.96 µg/d), zinc (7.12-9.92 mg/d), retinol (226.1-349.7 µg/d), riboflavin (0.44-0.70 mg/d) and docosahexaenoic acid (11.70-33.49 mg/d) amongst Sudanese women were very low compared with recommendations. The Sudanese diet was less diverse and differences in energy and nutrients intakes between groups were due to the amounts of food consumed. This view is supported by a lack of significant differences when intakes were expressed as proportion of whole energy between all groups of women.

Sudanese women’s and neonates’ vitamin A status

We have determined and compared the concentration levels of retinol and β-carotene in the plasma of three Sudanese women groups (displaced southern Sudanese women (DSSW), non-displaced southern Sudanese (NDSSW) and northern Sudanese women (NSW)), who were either pregnant or non-pregnant; and in their neonates (cord plasma). Plasma samples were analysed by high-performance liquid chromatography using reversed-phase column and diode-array detectors. The results revealed that retinol and β-carotene in the plasma of non-pregnant and pregnant women in the three groups were very low compared with studies reported elsewhere. Over 50% of pregnant DSSW and NDSSW had a low concentration of retinol plasma (< 0.70 µmol/L), and about 15-20% were deficient (< 0.35 µmol/L) according to World Health Organization criteria. Although the average retinol concentration in the plasma of pregnant NSW was > 0.70 µmol/L, which suggests sufficiency status, 32% showed lower levels and 10% were deficient. Plasma retinol β-carotene levels in the neonates' cords were also lower than their mothers and in comparison with other studies. These findings are in agreement with previous survey data and clinical reports, which also suggest that vitamin A deficiency is of great concern in the country. We concluded that insufficient intake of food of animal origin and repeated malarial and other parasitic diseases are the most likely causes of vitamin A deficiency.

Oil, Referendum and the Economic Impacts of Southern Sudan Secession

The secession of the South was officially proclaimed on Monday 7 February 2011. That marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Sudan. However, that was not passively or heedlessly received by the Sudanese, as has been wrongly promulgated by some mass media. The mass of the Sudanese thinkers and intellectuals expressed agony, shock or disenchantment with this outcome in the many symposiums and forums organized by Research Centrs. That does not controvert or dis-affirm the fact that few Northern Sudanese politicians expressed happiness and optimism. That is conflicting with the former mass and reveals different sentiments and also estimations of the post-impact and effects on the former one-country. There were multiple relationships and undeniable dependence on oil revenues, both in the North and the South. The sudden deprivation from oil that represented 75% of the GDP, over 95% of foreign currencies revenues are just part of the shock. Thus, it is necessary to go through some earlier overtones of secession that may help illuminate the prospective course of North-South relations and hence the possibility of establishing a strong economic complementary partnerships apart from that of transporting the oil of the south through the pipeline which passes through the North to Bashayir Seaport.

Milk of northern Sudanese mothers whose traditional diet is high in carbohydrate contains low docosahexaenoic acid

The suckling neonates and infants are reliant primarily on the mother for optimal supply of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). The richest source of preformed DHA is cold-water oily fish. Although there is paucity of data, existing evidence suggest women with restricted access to these foods have low or marginal DHA status. The aim of the study was to investigate milk fatty acids of Sudanese mothers whose traditional diet is high in carbohydrate and low in fat and gain some insight into the provision of DHA to the suckling offspring. Colostrum (n =26), transitional (n=20) and mature (n=14) milk samples were obtained from Northern Sudanese women (NSW) recruited prior to delivery from Ibrahim Malik and Khartoum Teaching Hospitals. The arachidonic acid content of the colostrum (0.87±0.28%) and transitional (0.89± 0.29%) and mature (0.48±0.12%) milk of the NSW were broadly comparable with published international values. In contrast, the DHA level (colostrum 0.13±0.07%, transitional 0.13±0.06% and mature milk 0.06±0.05%) was very low. The study reveals breast milk of NSW, whose traditional diet is almost devoid of fish and fish products, is unlikely to provide sufficient DHA to support optimal postnatal neuro-visual development.

History of TB in the Sudan

Introduction: Medical history in Sudan is far from being complete. There are no reliable records. Attempt to write on the projects and development of history of TB in the Sudan is a difficult task.Objective: To study and trace the progress of TB in Sudan during the last century through their historical development.Design: A retrospective study.Methods: Data were collected from the annual reports of the Sudan Medical Services. Libraries and a number of previous studies were consulted.Results: The route of entry of TB in the Sudan is mainly from the North. The South was virgin from TB up to 1930s. Northern Sudanese tribes have a high susceptibility and incidence of TB during 1925-1932 (3.7/1000). The south and the Nuba Mountains were almost free from infection or disease. The infectivity rate was highest in North 4.3% while Khartoum showed 3%. In the South, Rumbek district, no TB cases were reported before the age of puberty up to 1930. Prevalence of tuberculosis in 1959/1960 was 26.0% and the detection rate was only 30%.Conclusion: Northern Sudanese contracted tuberculosis while serving in the Egyptian army and cities. The Southern and Western tribes who were almost free from TB infection became highly susceptible to both infection and disease. The infectivity rate remains static during the last 50 years. Keywords: Sennar, Nuba Mountains, Darfur, Kassala, Mediterranean

Race in Africa: Four Epigraphs and a Commentary

“Look, a Negro!” It was an external stimulus that flicked over me as I passed by. I made a tight smile.“Look, a Negro!” It was true. It amused me.“Look, a Negro!” The circle was drawing a bit tighter. I made no secret of my amusement.“Mama, see the Negro! I am frightened!” Frightened! Frightened! Now they were beginning to be afraid of me. I made up my mind to laugh myself to tears, but laughter had become impossible.—Frantz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness” (111–12)The racialization of the Tutsi/Hutu was not simply an intellectual construct, one which later and more enlightened generations of intellectuals could deconstruct and discard at will. More to the point, racialization was also an institutional construct. Racial ideology was embedded in institutions, which in turn undergirded privilege and reproduced racial ideology. It was this political-institutional fact that intellectuals alone would not be able to alter. Rather, it would take a political-social movement to be dismantled.—Mahmood Mamdani,When Victims Become Killers(87)Far back as one may go into the past, from the northern Sudanese to the southern Bantu, the African has always and everywhere presented a concept of the world which is diametrically opposed to the traditional philosophy of Europe.—Leopold Sedar Senghor, “Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century” (30)Sango's history is not the history of primal becoming but of racial origin, which is historically dated.—Wole Soyinka,Myth, Literature and the African World(9)These four epigraphs give a sense of the diversity of usages of the category of race in Africa and the discourses and practices that coalesce around these usages. I use the textual fragments to open up questions about race in Africa, to explore the various discursive economies in which race is articulated and circulates, and the registers and vocabularies in which responses to it have been conducted. The approach adopted is therefore metonymic: each fragment represents a larger body of texts and practices that broadly constitute a discourse defined by a set of shared characteristics. My purpose is not to discuss exhaustively these characteristics but rather to draw rough distinctions among the conditions that govern their articulation and circulation. In this way I can indicate the network of social, historical, and discursive relations in which the idea of race functions.

Embodying honor: fertility, foreignness, and regeneration in eastern Sudan

In the Red Sea Hills of eastern Sudan, where poverty, famines, and conflict loom large, women struggle to gain the status of motherhood through bearing and raising healthy children, especially sons. But biological fate can be capricious in impoverished settings. Amidst struggle for survival and expectations of heroic mothering, women face realities that challenge their ability to fulfill their prescribed roles. Even as the effects of modernity and development, global inequities, and exclusionary government policies challenge traditional ways of life in eastern Sudan and throughout many parts of Africa, reproductive traumas - infertility, miscarriage, children's illnesses, and mortality - disrupt women's reproductive health and impede their efforts to achieve the status that comes with fertility and motherhood. In Embodying Honor Amal Hassan Fadlalla finds that the female body is the locus of anxieties about foreign dangers and diseases, threats perceived to be disruptive to morality, feminine identities, and social well-being. As a northern Sudanese viewed as an outsider in this region of her native country, Fadlalla presents an intimate portrait and thorough analysis that offers an intriguing commentary on the very notion of what constitutes the foreign. Fadlalla shows how Muslim Hadendowa women manage health and reproductive suffering in their quest to become responsible mothers and valued members of their communities. Her historically grounded ethnography delves into women's reproductive histories, personal narratives, and ritual logics to reveal the ways in which women challenge cultural understandings of gender, honor, and reproduction.

Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan, Amir H. Idris

Reviewed by: Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan Harvey Glickman Idris, Amir H . 2005. Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 141 pp. $59.95 (cloth) The centrality of the clash of identities to the analysis of the problems of Sudan has been cited since the 1970s, notably in pioneering research by Dunstan Wai (1973, 1981) and Francis Deng (1973, 1995). Idris builds on this work, and adds broader analytical commentary of his own. An informed reader may agree with his analysis, but a gap remains between solutions and strategies for implementation that eschew group compromise and conciliation and instead opt for the installation of a territorial civic consciousness and a national citizenship. There are multiple overlapping clan and community identities, but the author, now a professor at Fordham University in New York, sees the source of continuing conflict as the attempt by a racialized state to impose its ideology on a diverse society: "an ideology of hierarchy, which assigned a subordinate status for the people of the southern Sudan was historically constructed and politically institutionalized" (p. 4). He sees little difference in civilian and military regimes in Sudan, and he sees Mahdism, which created the Islamic state in Sudan in the 19th century, as having rigidified Arab slaving of the south and west, and indeed serving as the precursor of the Islamized state of today, one that continues the political imposition of racial identities. The civil war in Southern Sudan dramatized a supposed African-Arab split in the country, but Idris rues the regional autonomy inherent in the federalism that putative solutions have fostered. These solutions contribute to variations in constitutional democracy, but he believes that concentration on institutions contributing to democracy is at worst wrongheaded, or at best premature. Instead, he directs our attention to the unresolved crisis in the postcolonial state—a crisis that has misleadingly been analyzed via race and ethnicity, rather than through the unresolved master issue of civic citizenship. Idris arranges his discussion to cover related and overlapping topics in chapters dealing with state formation via unresolved colonial issues. These topics include administrative leadership, the treatment of the south, the growth of nationalism via imposed arabized identity, and the identity crisis in the conflicts in Darfur and between north and south. A chapter is [End Page 127] inserted on exile politics. In Cairo in 1996–1997, Idris conducted research among southern Sudanese exiles, from whom he discovered that a "national" identity becomes more paramount in exile: tribal identities break down when faced with Egyptian attitudes similar to the Sudanese arabized elite—and indeed, Christianity assumes more importance as southern Sudanese exiles try to distinguish themselves from other African refugees and from the northern Sudanese. (Idris draws on the analysis of refugee life among the Palestinians by Edward Said [1993], pp. 62–63.) A preliminary conclusion is that a single southern Sudanese identity is misconceived; ethnic categories undergo change over time. Thus, there is a chance that regional federalism and separation may not be the final answer in Sudan: there is a chance for a new civic and national identity. There is nevertheless something of a problem in defining the source of all basic difficulties as structural. First, it appears as precolonial slavery, a heritage barely addressed in the colonial state: "neither those who are included nor those who are excluded from the realm of democratic citizenship in the post-colonial state are ready to acknowledge the legacy of slavery in the contemporary discussion on political conflict and the disintegration of the post-colonial state in the Sudan" (p. 5). This discussion is followed by the discourse of the colonial regime, which essentially ignored subjugated peoples, especially those outside the riverine elite, based in Khartoum. This is carried forward by the successor independence regime, which made of race and ethnicity political categories. Idris follows Mahmood Mamdani (1996) there, noting that the regime imposed an ideology of hierarchy, which it institutionalized: "neither culture nor race is at the heart of the current conflict, rather it is the racialized state that transformed these cultural identities into political ones through the practice of slavery in the precolonial period, and state sponsored Islamization and...

N-Acetyltransferase Polymorphism Among Northern Sudanese

Interindividual and interethnic differences in allele frequencies of N-acetyltransferase (NAT2) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are responsible for phenotypic variability of adverse drug reactions and susceptibility to cancer. We genotyped the seven NAT2 common SNPs in 127 randomly selected unrelated northern Sudanese subjects using allele-specific and RFLP polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based methods. Molecular genotyping was enough to designate alleles for 41 individuals unambiguously, whereas 63 individuals' alleles were inferred from haplotypes previously described. In the remaining 23 individuals, however, the phase of the SNPs could not be decided because of multiple SNP heterozygotes. Using computational methods in the HAP and Phase programs, we confirmed the inferred alleles of the 62 individuals and predicted the remaining 23 ambiguous alleles. Twelve NAT2 alleles were identified. Four alleles coded for rapid acetylators (18%), and eight alleles coded for slow acetylators (82%). Two genotypes coded for rapid acetylation (3.9%), 10 for intermediate acetylation (27.6%), and 13 for slow acetylation (68.5%). The G191A African SNP and the G857A predominantly Asian SNP were each detected at a low frequency of 3.1%. The combination of molecular and computational analysis was useful in resolving ambiguous genotypes of NAT2 in multiple SNP heterozygotes. Among the northern Sudanese the SNPs associated with slow acetylation are more prevalent than in Caucasians and Asians. This and other African studies are suggestive of an African origin for NAT2-associated polymorphism.

Volvulus of the sigmoid colon in the Gezira.

Out of 34 consecutive patients presenting with volvulus of the sigmoid colon the Gezira area of The Sudan, 30 were western Sudanese farmers (age range 25-52 years) who habitually ate a single daily meal of high residue food: their colons were long and hypertrophied. In contrast, the 4 northern Sudanese (age range 60-92 years) ate a Western European type of diet and had a thin colon. This factor may have been responsible for the finding that the 5 patients presenting with gangrene of the sigmoid colon included all 4 northern Sudanese patients. Shock was a reliable indicator of gangrene but rebound tenderness was valueless. Deflation of the sigmoid volvulus via the sigmoidoscope succeeded in curing 19 of 25 patients in whom there was no suspicion of gangrene (4 later recurrences). Laparotomy was performed in the other 15 patients with operative untwisting in the absence of gangrene in 10 (2 later recurrences), and resections in the presence of gangrene (3 died).

Chronicles of Progress: Northern Sudanese Women in the Era of British Imperialism

Chronicles of Progress: Northern Sudanese Women in the Era of British Imperialism

Marginalization and Resistance: The Plight of the Nuba People

This paper describes partly the rise of the political consciousness of the Nuba people in Sudan. Throughout modern Sudanese political history the Nuba have been victimized first by the colonial powers and later by the northern Sudanese political elite. The present conflict in the Nuba Mountains is the refusal of the Nuba people to succumb to the different types of coercion staged by the Sudan government to ensure political hegemony. This inevitably gave breed to antagonisms against policies of domination. At the core of the dispute, therefore, are factors such as political marginalization, economic deprivation and socio-cultural indoctrination. Few examples are given to demonstrate how the northern political elite manipulates religion and Arabic culture in furtherance of northern Sudanese racial as well as political supremacy.

Back to Mangu Zambiri: Art, Politics and Identity in Northern Sudan

This paper is an attempt in cultural criticism from a certain aesthetic standpoint to investigate how the arts can give insight into the identity problem of Northern Sudanese. Given the archaeological and historical refutation of migration theory and the consolidation of the notion of the ethnic continuity of the central riverain inhabitants (the Ja'liyyin) as Nubians, the paper disputes the other characterization of them as a "culturally" Arabized Sudanese. To prove this, the long neglected aesthetic dimension as an essential component of culture is underlined. Challenging certain Arabocentric musical and literary discourses, the "Sudanese" nature of some aspects of Northern music and poetry is stressed. The concept "Sudanization" is adopted to define a historically ongoing key process which manifests itself in the arts. Also the term "specification" is used to describe alternative political and aesthetic discourses to define Sudanese identity such as the discourse of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and other forces.

Marriage, Sudanese-Style: Transnational Practices of Citizenship and Gender-Making for Sudanese Nationals in Egypt

Marriage, Sudanese-Style:Transnational Practices of Citizenship and Gender-Making for Sudanese Nationals in Egypt Anita Fábos Introduction This paper explores the contradictions between national identity and gendered practices of statecraft and metanarratives such as Arab Unity and Islam as they pertain to gender and identity for northern Sudanese transmigrants in Cairo. Like most states of the Arab Middle East, Egypt grants citizenship by way of a patrilineal conceptualization of identity that draws upon Arab and Islamic cultural practices. Northern Sudanese, regarded as fellow Arab Muslims, have been included in Egyptian policies that transcend statecraft (such as preferential residential and educational policies based on the "brotherhood" of the two peoples of the Nile Valley), yet they are excluded from citizenship except through the practice of Sudanese women marrying Egyptian men. Despite the possibility of real benefits of citizenship acquired through marriage of Egyptian nationals, Sudanese women living in Egypt do not seem to be pursuing this strategy. Recent negative changes in their legal status have focused attention on women as guardians not only of tradition but also of Sudanese citizenship. In this paper, I analyze Sudanese marriage practices in light of changes in Egyptian citizenship laws and residency regulations pertaining to Sudanese. This paper uses ethnographic data from fieldwork conducted between 1994 and 1997 among Sudanese living in Cairo, current research on Egyptian nationalism and citizenship [End Page 47] practices, as well as archival data from research on the Egyptian regulatory environment for non-Egyptian immigrants and refugees.1 Gender-Making, Statecraft, and Transnationalism The theoretical framework for this paper is drawn from work on the gendered nature of statecraft and citizenship2 and the positioning of women in transnational projects.3 Yet transnational individuals are subject to both the gender-specific regulations of states towards residents and citizens, and the differential experiences of migration and forced migration by women and men. In Egypt, this triangular relationship among gender-making, statecraft, and transnationalism is complicated further by metanarratives that seek to downplay differences among citizens through a unifying discourse of membership in Arab and Islamic nations. Marriage strategies, representing the intersection of citizenship, cultural and religious norms, and gender relations, speak to the different memberships of women and men in households, states, and society at large. Marriage practices, in addition to being gendered, also highlight the differences and tensions between various socioeconomic classes and generations of migrants. R. W. Connell, while recognizing the patriarchal nature of state systems, characterizes the complex set of interacting institutions of the state as a "gender regime" rather than a male state.4 The division of labor of states is gendered through a bureaucratic hierarchy, personal male networks, and, at least in states with free elections, an "electoral patriarchy" where substantially female electorates elect men.5 The role of states in regulating employment, education, housing, health, and so forth is both constitutive of the way its citizens carry out the basic activities of society, and constituted by members of the citizenry who carry out the work of the state using its own gendered mechanisms. The patriarchal character of the state's regulatory capacity is directly implicated in personal status laws such as Islamic marriage, where gender norms become codified through the complex interaction of state policies, social conditions, and religious jurisprudence. Gender ideals for both Egyptian and Sudanese Muslims draw heavily on Islamic concepts and norms linking modesty with sexual propriety [End Page 48] and Arab cultural beliefs associating honor with marriageability, particularly for women.6 Anthropologists of northern Sudanese communities have identified gender ideologies that relate Sudanese behavior, especially that of women, to specific cultural codes of modesty, chastity, hospitality, and dignity.7 Janice Boddy in particular links gender norms and the enactment of propriety with her informants' "firmly moral sense of identity."8 Her analysis of the symbolic underpinnings of reproduction and human fertility as the framework of this identity is based on her understanding that her informants see men and women as wholly complementary, and that the social structure binds men and women together on the basis of kinship. The main expressions of this cultural logic, according to Boddy, are combined in marriage as a central framework for the production and...

A Century in Print: Arabic Journalism and Nationalism in Sudan, 1899–1999

In 1999, Sudan's Arabic periodical press observes its hundredth anniversary. A century before, and one year after the collapse of the Mahdist state (1881–98), the Britishdominated “Anglo-Egyptian“ regime (1898–1956) launched an official Arabic-English gazette. Four years later, Lebanese journalists founded the region's first independent Arabic newspaper, catering to an audience of Egyptians and Lebanese employed by the new government. These expatriates sparked an interest in journalism among educated Northern Sudanese men, who within a few years of the newspaper's debut were avidly subscribing and contributing to journals.

Seasonal stability and variation in diet as reflected in human mummy tissues from the Kharga Oasis and the Nile Valley

Stable carbon isotopes of the hair and skin of six Roman–Byzantine Period (400–700 AD) individuals from the Kharga Oasis, Egypt, were analysed in order to reconstruct degrees of dietary variability or stability in an oasis ecology. These results are compared to previously studied contemporaneous individuals who lived at sites from the Nilotic ecology near Wadi Halfa, in the Northern Sudan. Residues extracted from the Kharga material appear to belong to C3 plants (such as trees) and probably are resins used in an artificial mummification process. Lengths of hair representing up to a one-year period of growth indicate that the oasis environment was unaffected by seasonality, compared with the seasonal shifting of C3 plants (wheat, barley, fruits, vegetables) and C4 plants (millet, sorghum) at sites located along the Nile. The Kharga population consumed significantly greater quantities of C3 plants and does not appear to have produced C4 plants locally, or imported them in trade with Northern Sudanese populations. There are also no dietary differences between either males and females, or adults and children, which suggests that status was not biologically defined.

Islamism and Militarism in Sudanese Politics: Its Impact on Nation-Building

Islamism and Militarism in Sudanese Politics: Its Impact on Nation-Building Elias Nyamlell Wakoson Bowling Green State University General Perspective This essay will present an analytic perspective of the complex political relationship between the southern Sudan and northern Sudanese dominated governments within the specific framework of the political-ideological concept of Islamism and military rule. It should, however, be noted from the outset that the pivotal point of south-central government relationship has been the persistent resistance by southern Sudanese to northern Arabicized-Islamic ruling elite's policy of trying to impose Islamism-Arabism on the whole country irrespective of southern opposition and the country's immense diversity. It is also noteworthy to mention that the deliberate socioeconomic underdevelopment of the southern region by the central government, has been at the center of the conflict situation between the southern region and the central government. Nonetheless, it is the political-ideological dynamics of this relationship that has created the persistent south-north conflict situation, which in turn impeded the country's potential to develop lasting political institutions, a stable political environment, and a peaceful national democratic society. The conflict situation has also created the political conditions which encouraged the increasing involvement of the military in Sudanese politics. All these factors have had a critical impact on the process of nation-building. Thus concept of the Sudan as a nation-state is still an artificial one for most of its citizens. In reality, there is no consensual acceptance of a Sudanese identity in terms of a common dominant form of group consciousness that coalesce to support the supreme authority of the nation-state. One reason, amongst many others, is the fact that the Sudanese have been ruled, for most of their four decades of independence, by®Northeast African Studies (ISSN 0740-9133) Vol. 5, No. 2 (New Series) 1998, pp. 47-94 47 48 Elias Nyamlell Wàkoson illegitimate governments that have relentlessly attempted to impose unmandated political systems, and a single Arab-Islamic identity on the whole country. The process of nation-building and the ingredients upon which this process should be based is a very controversial subject-matter. Irrespective of the nationalities that the territorial boundaries of a state encompass, there are two opposite methods of nation-building: by force and the other by broad national consensus. Both processes are usually gradual in attaining a high level of national togetherness. The consensual national process being attained usually through peaceful political bargaining and the coercive method by violence. Notwithstanding the focus on the ideology of Islamism-Arabism, there are other ideological orientations in the Sudan which have all had significant impact on the political and socioeconomic development of the country. These ideological orientations will not be discussed here, not because they are not important but simply to limit the scope of this study. The primary political-ideological conflict in the Sudan has been between racialist theocraticism and national democratic secularism. The former has its elite ideologues and overwhelming mass followers, exclusively, in the geographical northern Sudan. The latter has its overwhelming proponents and mass following in the southern Sudan, among the intelligentsia and most of the marginalized national groups in the north. National secularism is a concept which has two groups of proponents in the Sudan. There are the northern Sudanese-based national secularists who reject the idea of an Islamic state but accept the idea of a Sudanese Arab state. Their position is not only weak but quite confusing since Pan-Arabism has always been presented by its proponents as an integral component of Pan-Islamism. The Africans and those who subscribe to the African heritage of fhe Sudan are those who reject both the concept of an Arab or an Arab-Islamic state. National secularism, in the Sudan, is associated with the establishment of a democratic system of government based on the rule of law without one single group dominating the government or a single religion guiding the national political and socioeconomic activities of the country. This explains why the conflict situation in the Sudan has taken on regional, cultural, religious and racial dimensions and has been depicted in sweeping terms as "South-North," "African- Arab," and "IslamicChristian /African...