The ethnic and linguistic diversity of Sudan and South Sudan is an established fact, although the contours of “legitimate” ethnolinguistic categorizations have been disputed in the region since the early 20th century by administrators, missionaries, local leaders, intellectuals, politicians, social activists, anthropologists and linguists. Censuses and statistics have played a pivotal role in the construction of taxonomies of “Arab groups” subdivided along tribal lines, e.g. Jaʿālī, Juhayna, Shaygiyya, and so-called “non-Arab groups” defined by language, e.g. Nubian, Beja, Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa, Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Bari, Lotuko, Zande (Miller 2018). Beyond their historical plasticity and social relativeness, such categories and broader ones like “Arab” or “African” are politically sensitive. Indeed, they have contributed to ethnicize the wars plaguing Sudan since the middle of the 20th century (Johnson 2016).
Recent developments have again brought to the fore conflicting social ide...