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Gerd Baumann, 1987, National Integration and Local Integrity, The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, New York.

The fringes of Islam, to borrow Richard Hill's felicitous phrase, have always been a fascinating area of study. One current reason for this study is the conviction by many that the dominant Northern Sudanese ideology leaves no room for subaltern groups. These groups, whether Berti, Fur, Uduk or Nuba, are supposedly faced with two alternatives: complete assimilation or stubborn resistance. Neither alternative seems very attractive, yet both are evident in the contemporary reality of a fragmenting Sudan.

Gerd Baumann takes this problem of national integration and turns it on its head. The small community of Miri, in the Nuba mountains, was not integrated 'into' the dominant Sudanese culture and national economy, or into Islam. Rather, the Miri took the basic elements of the outside society and refashioned them to fit into their own society. In the process, of course, their own institutions were reshaped (or 'redintegrated', as Baumann puts it: 'made whole again').

The strength of the book is the precise analysis of the process of this reformulation of Miri culture and society. Baumann uses a writing technique I found very appealing. He starts with conventional observations about Miri integration into wider Sudanese society. Four aspects are highlighted- (1) the farming economy and labor migration, (2) community and polity, (3) religion, and (4) music and dance. Then in successive chapters Baumann probes each of these aspects using different ethnographic tools. As he puts it, each chapter tries to come closer to the Miri's own view. He looks at what Miri informants say about the process; he looks at the actual things the Miri have done in relation to the process; he tries to understand the historical contingencies that shaped the process; and lastly he tries to go beyond presenting discourse and facts and into Miri meaning and interpretation.

This last section is most problematic. Baumann cleverly uses the bilingualism of most Miri to compare and contrast Arabic translations of Miri vocabulary (the Arabic translations are hilla, hesh, ahal, and khaf, which are also represented in English as: village, farming, kinship and awe). Baumann wants to use these "key words" (words that are difficult to define without understanding the context of their usage) to deepen the sense of what 'redintegration' means for the Miri. He is unable to go beyond the analysis presented in the preceding chapters, though, because he limits himself to what "the Miri" think or understand,

To borrow Baumann's own analogy of Heidegger's ship (whose parts are continually changed and yet whose integrity as 'the ship' or 'the Miri' remains the same), I would have liked to see more about the different kinds of ships that are created in the process. A more successful chapter might have tried to break down "the Miri" into the discordant voices that certainly exist and which are hinted about throughout the book. He does attempt that in a limited way in the conclusion, with an excellent discussion of the problem of labor migrants. None of the migrants had returned to live in the villages, and yet they retained their problematic identities as villagers. Two other processes deserved closer attention.

First, Baumann never fully confronts what seems to be a central problematic in Miri society- the changing power of women within households. Their expressions of dissatisfaction (voiced in grindstone and other songs) are instead used to illustrate other aspects of Miri society (male political struggles, economic change at the village level). In that regard, the question of how female circumcision came to be dominant in one generation is not addressed.

Second, Baumann asserts that the community is very equal, in terms of economic power. Yet there is no data that would validate such an assertion, and book is peppered with details that suggest otherwise- some households are much larger than others, some households are connected to labor migrants, some households are shopkeepers, some participate more actively in the government agricultural scheme. Does this differentiation influence people's views about their community? Does it influence those shared standards that define local integrity?

Ultimately, it might have been better to think of Miri 'meanings' instead of 'meaning'. In that regard the book resembles other ethnographies that have been thrown into the fire of the anthropological discipline's own internal discourse. It seems only fitting that Baumann's book should be enmeshed in a process that sounds awfully similar to the process enveloping the Miri.