Publisher's Synopsis
This is the first detailed ethnography of a Nuba society unusually receptive to wide-ranging influences from the Arabic-speaking, Muslim Northern Sudan. The Miri exemplify many of the processes conducive to national integration as it is conceived by politicians, planners, and the metropolitan media. The juxtaposition of national integration as an aim of official policy within a multi-ethnic state, and local integrity as the demand of a culturally distinctive group, raises conceptual issues of broader significance. Detailed local evidence is used to explore, and to comment upon, these wider issues.;This book is aimed at social anthropologists, and students of Sudanese affairs, including politics and economics, African, Middle Eastern, and Islamic studies.