■ Meyer, Gabriel, 2005. War and Faith in Sudan. Grand Rapids, MI & Cambridge: Eerdmans. 196 pp. ISBN 0802829333
| Date | 01 March 2007 |
| Author | Ole Magnus Theisen |
| Published date | 01 March 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433070440020711 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
and so probably will other students of the role of
religion in conflicts in Africa and elsewhere.
Ragnhild Nordås
䊏Krohn-Hansen, Christian & Knut G. Nustad,
eds, 2005. State Formation: Anthropological Per-
spectives. London & Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto. 250
pp. ISBN 0745324428.
The emphasis in this edited volume is on the
notion that anthropologists can, and indeed should,
investigate the state by virtue of being anthro-
pologists, thus underscoring the fruitfulness of an
ethnographic approach to the subject matter. A
common thread throughout the book is that the
state cannot be seen as a fixed entity with a dis-
tinguishable core that objectifies the state as
opposed to society. The logical implication is that
power is negotiable, thus states are always in flux,
requiring a cultural approach to the constant
negotiation of the meaning of stateness. Since
most of the authors (with the explicit dissent of
Neumann in ch. 9) argue that there is no clear
division between state and society, the state must
be studied in the effects it produces, i.e. state effects
(cf. Trouillot, 2001), being the creation and iden-
tification of subjects; a legibility effect, used to
classify and regulate the population; and ‘spa-
tialization’, being the production of boundaries
and jurisdiction. Neumann argues that the wish of
being perceived as a unitary coherent actor makes
state institutions communicate this through
downplaying change and dissent within the
organization, to the detriment of substantive
developments and the public interest. This proves
for him that the state is indeed separable from
society, as it neglects the demands from outside the
organization, in order to maintain internal coher-
ence. The accessibility of the chapters for a non-
anthropologist varies considerably, but a layman
will get the substantive conclusions from all of
them without too much effort. I miss, however, a
concluding chapter which sums up the main
threads after they have been discussed.
Ole Magnus Theisen
䊏Lindner, Evelin, 2006. Making Enemies:
Humiliation and International Conflict. Westport,
CT: Praeger Security International. 187 pp. ISBN
0275991091.
In her book, Evelin Lindner looks into how
humiliation plays a role on the global scene and
in international conflicts. Humiliation is a term
that has been very little discussed in this sphere,
and Lindner asks questions such as: What do we
feel when we feel humiliated? How does the
feeling affect what we think of ourselves and
others? And is the feeling different when we are
humiliated as an individual, a group or a nation?
The word humiliation is used to describe three
different elements: the perpetrator’s act, the
victim’s feeling and the social process. The book
has three parts: first the concept of humiliation,
second the role of humiliation in international
conflicts and finally a discussion of how to deal
with humiliation. Linder does a good job of
describing the phenomenon, and it is clear that
humiliation has a part to play on the global scene.
She pays special attention to the relationship
between the West and the Arabic world and how
humiliation has affected this relationship. The
book offers many illustrations from Lindner’s
field work in Rwanda and Somalia and her work
as a clinic psychologist; these are good supple-
ments to aid understanding of the discussion.
However, the leap from individual level to inter-
national level seems at times too easily made.
When reading this book, it is important to keep
in mind that it does not provide a full under-
standing of the causes of international conflict. A
discussion on the relationship between humili-
ation and other causes of conflict would have
been interesting. But this is very interesting
reading for those who wish to understand the feel-
ings behind the realpolitik.
Siri Aas Rustad
䊏Meyer, Gabriel, 2005. War and Faith in
Sudan. Grand Rapids, MI & Cambridge:
Eerdmans. 196 pp. ISBN 0802829333.
In this non-academic account of the latest phase
of the civil war in Sudan, Gabriel Meyer gives an
inspired portrayal of the suffering of civilians at
the local level during the conflict. The main
theme of the book is the period 1998–2004 as
seen from the Nuba Mountains in Southern
Kordofan, a border-area between the North and
South in Sudan. The author explicitly disclaims
that the book is an expert account, but claims to
speak for the Nuba, so it must be seen as a per-
sonal enterprise with all its biases. A central tenet
of the book is the role of identity in the conflict
between the Khartoum Islamist government and
the more pluralistically oriented peripheries of
Sudan, and how the two seemingly incompati-
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 44 / number 2 / march 2007
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