The borderlands of South Sudan: authority and identity in contemporary and historical perspectives

Current international discourse on the new state of South Sudan seems fixated on the "state construction." This book aims to broaden the debate by examining the character of regulatory authority in South Sudan's borderlands in both contemporary and historical perspective. The contributions gathered here show that emerging border governance practices challenge the bounded categorization of "state" and "non-state", especially in the complex interactions between state, military, and business actors and power structures. It thus provides a timely and sophisticated contribution to the literature on African borderlands, examining a new state in creation at its borders, and providing an anthropologically and historically informed view of a rapidly evolving situation.