'Kwanim pa: the making of the Uduk people: an ethnographic study of survival in the Sudan-Ethiopian borderlands

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Title:	'Kwanim pa: the making of the Uduk people: an ethnographic study of survival in the Sudan-Ethiopian borderlands
Author:	James, Wendy
Year:	1979
Pages:	304
Language:	English
City of publisher:	Oxford
Publisher:	Clarendon Press
ISBN:	0198231946
Geographic term:	Sudan
Subjects:	Uduk anthropology
Abstract:	Account of the Uduk people of the Sudan, their subsistence, kinship and settlement patterns, population history and migrations. Repeated reference is made to selected aspects of myth, symbol and cult, and to the Gurunya ritual which is devoted to the saving of 'foundling' children. In this way the author has tried to explore the nature of the link between past and present in Uduk society. Besides externally demonstrable links between the hisorical record of devastation and the main features of Uduk communities today, there are also inner connections between the past experience of the people, their digested memory of that experience, and the way in which they represent themselves, the 'kwanin pa, as still a 'foundling people' who have survived the repeated destruction of their former world and are putting together a new. This self-image is the key to understanding present-day Uduk economic, political, and kinship institutions and behaviour.