Kings of Disaster: Dualism, Centralism and the Scapegoat King in Southeastern Sudan (Studies in Human Society, Vol 5)

An anthropological study of the rainmakers of the Nilotic Sudan. Taking his inspiration from Rene Girhard's theory of consensual scapegoating the author shows that the long standing 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 victims. "Kings of Disaster" so proposes an uninvolved solution to the vexed problem of regicide. Recent cases occurring during the great drought of the mid-1980's are described and analyzed. Making simulataneous use of the first-hand field data and archival sources the book offers the first presentation of five Nilotic communities on the East Bank of the Nile. The new perspective opened on the role of violence in the structuring of society should be of interest to students of anthropology, social history, political science and sociology.