Kings of Disaster: Dualism, Centralism and the Scapegoat King in Southeastern Sudan

by Simon Simonse

Overview

The long-awaited, revised, and illustrated edition of Simon Simonse’s study of the Rainmakers of the Nilotic Sudan marks a breakthrough in anthropological thinking on African political systems. Taking his inspiration from René Girard’s theory of consensual scapegoating, the author shows that the longstanding distinction of states and stateless societies as two fundamentally different political types does not hold. Centralized and segmentary systems only differ in the relative emphasis put on the victimary role of the king as compared with that of enemy. Kings of Disaster proposes an elegant and powerful solution to the vexed problem of regicide.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628953336
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2018
Series:	Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	556
File size:	48 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Trained as a structural anthropologist in Leiden and Paris, SIMON SIMONSE received a doctorate for his research on early kingship in South Sudan in 1990 from the Free University of Amsterdam. During the 1970s and 1980s he taught anthropology in DR Congo, Uganda, the Netherlands, South Sudan, and Indonesia. Since 1993 he has worked as a conflict transformation expert in the Horn and Great Lakes of Africa.

Table of Contents

Contents Models, Diagrams and Tables Narratives from Various Sources Serving as Case Histories Foreword by Mark Anspach Acknowledgments to the First Edition Introduction Part I: The Problem and the Setting 1. The King: Focus of Suspense, Lever of Consensus and Inventor of the State 2. Ethnological Connections Between the Nile and the Kidepo 3. Modes of Subsistence and Social Organisation 4. The Passing of the Glamour: The Bari 5. The Twin Kingdoms: The Lotuho 6. The Bugbear of the Administration: The Pari, Lokoya, and Lulubo Part II: Dualism: Generating Consensus from the Suspense of War 7. The Dualist Structure of Territorial Organisation 8. The Dualist Structure of Age‑class Organisation Part III: Centralism: The King as Aggressor of the People 9. The King as Enemy of his People 10. The King as Unifier of the People 11. Tipping the Balance of Power from the People to the King 12. Boundaries in the Sky: The Territorial Dimension of Kingship 13. The Fingers of God: The Cosmological Dimension of Kingship 14. Rain Queens and Rainstones: Symbols of the Centre 15. The Spear and the Bead: The Fragility of Kingship Part IV: The Scapegoat King: The People as Aggressor of their King 16. The King as Victim in Suspense 17. The King as Victim 18. “Catching Life in the Spell of Death”: The Ritualisation of the King’s Victimhood 19. The Metabolism of Violence and Order: The King’s Stomach at Work Conclusion Appendix I: Chronology of Key Events Appendix II: Linguistic affinity between the ethnic groups figuring in the text Archival Sources Published Titles and Theses Map of the Peoples of South Sudan Map of East Bank Equatoria Name Index of the Kings, Queens, Masters and Other Overlords Figuring in the Dramas of this Study General Index

Editorial Reviews

‘Simon Simonse’s Kings of Disaster is a monumental achievement. I believe it is the most important work on the long-mooted topic of divine kingship yet written, a book that brings the questions debated since the time of Sir James Frazer and Evans-Pritchard to a final,definitive resolution: everything from “did Africans really kill their sacred kings?” to “what is the real nature of the principle of sovereignty that still lies behind the bureaucratic forms of the modern nation-state?” The answers are never quite what we expected. If there is such a thing as progress in anthropology, and not just shifting fashion, then this book must stand as the starting-point for any future discussion on these topics.’- David Graeber, London School of Economics,

‘It is impossible to overstate the achievement of this book. With an exemplary combination of empirical rigour and theoretical daring, Kings of Disaster transforms the landscape of African studies while forcing us to think in new ways about the origins of political power and the state.’- Mark Anspach, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris

‘The ethnographic richness of this volume is astonishing: the author has ransacked archives, combed historical accounts, and carried out superb fieldworkhimself... From this viewpoint, the volume offers a more unified vision of the region and of the problems raised by these kingdoms than the isolated monographs about these peoples written in the wake of Evans-Pritchard.’- Jean-Claude Muller, Université de Montréal, in Anthropologie et Sociétés

From the Publisher