The Local Making of a South Sudanese State (Completed Project) - Lost

The Local Making of a South Sudanese State (Completed Project)

The Local Making of a South Sudanese State (Completed Project)

Description

Timm’s research in Torit town in South Sudan is on the continuous construction and reconstruction of the state, but also examines features of its structural endurance and perseverance. He shows how multiple ideas of a state are translated into local contexts, such as the necessity and functioning of formal Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) processes, monetarization of the economy and the creation of a national identity. These ideas are transported with the help of experts, manuals, and people contributing with their own experiences, building on and shaping existing hopes and symbols. Carving out the elements of state formation that actually contribute to the stabilization of the South Sudanese state, or its destabilization, means going beyond a pre-defined set of ideas about what a state is, often based on an understanding derived from western European welfare nation-states.

Key publication

Unpublished PhD Dissertation: “‘The last bullet’: South Sudan’s emerging state”.

Date: 2010-2016

Further Information

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ABOUT THE LOST RESEARCH NETWORK

The acronym LOST stands for Law, Organization, Science and Technology. Anthropology of Law (L), Organization Studies (O), and Science and Technology Studies (ST) are three vigorous transdisciplinary fields. A growing academic current mingles these fields and thereby engenders provocative insights. Working at the intersection of these fields and fusing their approaches, we additionally emphasize the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of fact-making in the contemporary. The ambition of our detailed ethnographies is to respond to long-standing questions raised in social theory and philosophy and vice-versa, to render those questions into ethnographic inquiries with a special focus on critique. We address issues of global and planetary scope, although several of our empirical projects are situated in Africa. Since its inception in 2002, LOST has expanded – from a small group localized in Halle to a decentralized network of independent scholars.