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Resource-based conflict constitutes one of the most serious challenges facing many regions in Sudan. Traditionally, resource-based conflict has been represented by the age-old competition between farmers and pastoralists over water and land resources. Due to the protracted nature of conflicts over resources in Sudan, conflicts take on an ugly identity that is tearing the country apart. Conflicts over resources take place at community local levels, but they are often escalated by state policies. Munzoul A.M. Assal argues that understanding conflicts in Sudan requires that we pay more attention to the state and the institutional framework within which conflicts take place. Development (2006) 49, 101–105. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100284

The literature on nomadism shows that nomadic and sedentary modes of production complement each other. The interaction between them is characterized by both complementarity and conflict, depending on the prevalent circumstances that vary according to the ecological conditions of the environment that supports their subsistence base. The movement of people between these two modes of production has also been documented, particularly in Western Sudan where circumstances are favourable. Using examples from Western Sudan, this article argues that external factors such as state policies and internationalization are the cause of conflicts between nomads and sedentary people that we see today. Due to external factors, the complementary linkage has become one of conflict. We need to shift our anthropological work to a more expeditious analysis in which the forms and outcomes of the interaction between farmers and nomads at any point in time are seen as the product of the total social system in which they live, rather than a particular aspect of it.

In October 2008 the Department of Anthropology of the University of Khartoum celebrated its golden jubilee. It owed its establishment and development to foreign anthropologists who taught and led research during its formative years, including Wendy James, Ahmed Al‐Shahi, Gunnar Haaland, Gunnar Sørbø, and Jay O'Brien. Ian Cunnison, and Fredrik Barth. British, American, and Norwegian anthropologists played key roles in the development of anthropology in Sudan and directed the course of the discipline in the country. Sudan holds a prestigious position in world anthropology as a result of the influential contributions of E. E. Evans‐Pritchard, Charles G. Seligman, and Barth. This entry is an account of anthropology in Sudan and how it developed. It gives a chronology of the discipline in Sudan, describes the evolution of the department, and explores the themes covered by anthropologists who did their research in Sudan.

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