{"id":2954,"date":"2011-08-03T05:00:30","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T09:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=2954"},"modified":"2011-08-01T09:20:43","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T13:20:43","slug":"civil-conflict-bride-price-and-cattle-theft-in-south-sudan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/2954","title":{"rendered":"Civil Conflict, Bride Price, and Cattle Theft in South Sudan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Those of you who are looking for a dissertation topic and who want to do fieldwork in the world&#8217;s newest country may wish to investigate the following. From a Bloomberg\u00a0<a title=\"Cows-for-Bride Inflation Spurs Cattle Theft Among Mundari in South Sudan\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2011-07-26\/cows-for-bride-inflation-spurs-cattle-theft-among-mundari-in-south-sudan.html\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;Emmanuel Gambiri said an educated wife in his cattle-herding Mundari tribe in South\u00a0Sudan\u00a0costs 50 cows, 60 goats and 30,000 Sudanese pounds ($12,000) in cash.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">At that price, some men who otherwise can\u2019t afford a bride turn to stealing livestock in order to buy a wife and gain status, said Gambiri, citing a friend who is now a cattle rustler. A surge in &#8216;bride price&#8217; has fueled cattle raids in which more than 2,000 people are killed each year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">In his village of Terekeka, in the state of Central Equatoria, Gambiri recalls a time when wives cost as little as 12 cows and tribal chiefs wielded enough power to call the parents and set an affordable bride price.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Today, he says, it\u2019s a different story.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Even as South Sudan celebrated its independence July 9, a two-decade civil war has left scars. The war eroded traditional authority and farming practices, leaving a generation of young men who have grown up either in the army, militias or refugee camps.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8216;These boys now don\u2019t know how to cultivate. All they know how to manage well is an AK-47,&#8217; said Gambiri, 37, a program manager for a nonprofit organization, in an interview.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The article discusses the &#8220;causal&#8221; link between bride price and cattle theft. For a budding development researcher, I think it would be interesting to first test whether that link is indeed causal, and to then study how the bridal economy is affected by the presence of former combatants.<\/p>\n<p>(HT: Mathieu Lalonde.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those of you who are looking for a dissertation topic and who want to do fieldwork in the world&#8217;s newest country may wish to investigate&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/2954\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Civil Conflict, Bride Price, and Cattle Theft in South Sudan<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,55,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development","category-economics","category-micro","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-LE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2954"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3001,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions\/3001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}