In this work, Mohamed A.G. Bakhit focuses on the construction of identity and different lifestyles of the Al-Baraka shantytowns area, located in the northeastern periphery of the city of Khartoum in Sudan, populated mainly by migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from South Sudan, Darfur, and the Nuba Mountains. As a cultural anthropologist, Bakhit analyzes the process of social identity construction and lifestyle practices of shantytown settlers on the bases of generational variations, rural-urban disparities, and ethno-cultural differences between Khartoum and local people’s home areas in South Sudan and western Sudan.
The work is organized in eight chapters. Chapter 1, the introduction, is about shantytowns in Khartoum, urban life, ethnicity and identity, slums, and shantytowns in the global south. The author also discusses the methodology for his research in this chapter, stating that his work is an ethnographic study using the technique of participant observation.
In chapter 2, Bahkit offers the reader a detailed description of different environments and livelihoods, beginning at the bottom of the urban hierarchy. The author also addresses the heterogeneity of the shantytown population, which plays a crucial role in differentiating shantytown residents from the rest of the Khartoum urban population. He also tries to explain how local government, through its consistent urban policies, has consolidated the gap between the marginalized shantytown populations and those of wealthier parts of the city. Chapter 3 is about the social structure of the Al-Baraka community. The author explains the concept of lifestyle in order to give readers features of the social structure of this community and how it enables us to unpack local classifications of different lifestyle groups.
Chapter 4 begins with an illustrative story from Al-Baraka, giving us a sense of social relations and the positioning of first-generation residents in their daily lives, as well as how they exercise their authority and impose specific meanings on everyday urban life. The chapter also treats the composition of the first generation, the inner structure of this lifestyle group, and their relations with other lifestyle groups in Al-Baraka. The author concludes the chapter by examining economic migrants and forced migrants as two distinct sub-categories largely making up the first-generation lifestyle group.
Chapter 5 focuses on how educated people manage to assume more power and privilege in Al-Baraka, as well as how they manage to take power specifically from first-generation residents after the economic upgrading of the area. Chapter 6, titled “The Second Generation: Looking Outside,” explores how younger generations consolidate their own specific lifestyles and their distinctive ways of creating their own spaces and arenas of interaction.
In chapter 7, Bakhit deals with two important questions. The first is whether people really choose their way of life, or if they obtain it from their surrounding environment. The second question is how are people able to choose their lifestyle and what is the process and the dynamics of this selection. Drawing on three examples, Nuba wrestling, auto-rickshaw drivers, and private schools, the author helps the reader to understand the main characteristics of the localization process. He then identifies four criteria for this localization process to become fully completed.
The last chapter focuses on the construction and reconstruction of identity and lifestyle in the shantytowns. The author concludes the chapter by stating that social identity in Sudan today is certainly not confined to a simple binary opposition (e.g., Arab vs. African); rather, it is a social identity constituted from more complex sets of lifestyle practices (147). Those practices are informed by all the world(s) that they have been related to in the past or in the present.
Overall, Identity and Lifestyle Construction in Multi-ethnic Shantytowns is an important read for those interested in the cultures of Sudan and in identity and lifestyle issues all over the world.
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[Review length: 624 words • Review posted on October 24, 2017]