Contesting Miss South Sudan: Gender and Nation Building in Diasporic Discourse

Contes t ing Miss South Sudan

GENDER AND NATION-BUILDING IN DIASPORIC DISCOURSE

CAROLINE FARIADartmouth College, USA

Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As South Sudan prepares for a referendum on independence in 2011, heightened nation-

alist expression within popular and political discourse reveals a messier and more openly

disputed conception of the ideal Southern Sudanese woman. In this article I examine one

site for debate in the diaspora, the US based Miss South Sudan beauty pageant. Highlight-

ing the perseverance and power of the Woman-as-Nation discourse, I read the contest as

a politically significant expression of a ‘South Sudanese’ national identity, with elements

of the advertising, organization and the performance itself promoting a particularly

faith, race and class based role model. This ideal is deeply politicized, linked both to

the long history of conflict in Sudan and contemporary political and social shifts

around gender. Miss South Sudan straddles traditional and modern notions of woman-

hood and women’s patriotism revealing productive contestations around femininity and

empowerment in the post-conflict period. This analysis highlights the troubling of

gender at work in the diaspora and the conflicting visions for women in the new nation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keywordsbeauty queens, diaspora, gender, nationalism, Sudan

The new nation of South Sudan has given us an opportunity to dream, andwith dreams come hope and with hope we have a sense of purpose and direction.We, as a people, can therefore exhibit our presence, our culture, our very identity tothe rest of the world through pageants like this and be proud of who we are. To ourcontestants I say this is your opportunity . . . to use your God given qualities andphysical traits and character for good causes that will uplift your people.1

In the run up to the second annual Miss South Sudan beauty pageant, held inJuly 2007 in Kansas City, a local DJ appealed to members of the community to

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12:2 June 2010, 222–243

ISSN 1461-6742 print/ISSN 1468-4470 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis

http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/14616741003665268

‘Expose yourself to a one of a kind cultural experience!’ The enthusiasticannouncer promised the audience an exciting, glamorous and uniquelySudanese-American event, with a parade of young women epitomizing,according to the advertisement, Southern Sudanese ‘beauty, personality, supre-macy and intelligence’.2 This audio-message was posted at the Miss SouthSudan website and on the pageant’s myspace and Hi5 pages in the weeks pre-ceding the event, while an official invite was e-mailed out to a host of SouthernSudanese diasporic listserves, online newspapers and forums that reachedmembers across the USA and Canada, Europe, Africa and Australia. Accordingto the 25-year-old organizer, Mr Bol Tem, inspiration for the event came after anight watching Miss America and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the contest oozedwith quintessential pageantry-style glamour. Miss South Sudan mirrored theall-American beauty pageant formula with the obligatory silk sashes, longevening gowns and, for each of the two princesses and the queen, a crown.During the six-hour event, contestants showcased their qualifications to rep-resent their community and their new nation through fashion show, danceand interview sections. Their efforts were punctuated by the speeches of com-munity and government leaders, the showcasing of Southern Sudanese musicaltalent and the commentary of the emcees who all worked in different ways toweave together themes of the body – beautiful, poised, feminine, empowered;and the nation – a new, united and modern South Sudan. Beyond the appoint-ment of a new beauty queen I suggest that this pageant also powerfully revealsand reproduces contested ideologies of gender, citizenship and nationalism atthe dawn of a new South Sudanese political era.

METHODS

This article is based on research into the first and second Miss South Sudanbeauty pageants held in July 2006 and 2007, and was conducted betweenJuly 2007 and 2008. I conducted a visual and textual discourse analysis ofpromotional materials for the event, which included a series of YouTube pro-motional videos, advertising posters, the pages of the official misssouthsu-dan.com website, over 300 photographs of the event posted on-line, andover six hours of film footage from the 2007 event shot for the promotionalDVD. In addition I examined copies of the pageant speeches, interview ques-tions, entry forms and questionnaires. I also observed and analyzed on-linediscussion and debate about the pageant posted on Sudanese diasporicforums as well as those communicated through a popular US-based SouthSudanese diasporic listserve. Finally, during this period I conducted semi-structured interviews in person, on the telephone or via email with pageantorganizers, the 2006 pageant winner, musicians, judges, a number of atten-dees and some of the most active listserve discussants. Given the evolvingnature of the pageant promotion and organizing, and the debates around it,

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Carol ine Faria/Contesting Miss South Sudan 223

I conducted between one and three interviews with respondents over thecourse of the year.

EXPLORING PLACE-MAKING AND DIASPORIC POLITICS IN PAGEANTRYPERFORMANCE

Feminist scholars have highlighted the powerful gendering of nationalismthrough the positioning of women as icons of cultural tradition, as reproducersand nurturers of the family and nation and as territorialized subjects of desire(McClintock 1991; Yuval-Davis 1997; Enloe 2000; Mayer 2000). Powerfullyenduring, feminist theorists argue that this emphasis on motherhood and theidealization of a nationalist body works to promote rigid, totalizing and essen-tializing constructions of women that serve the nationalist project, narrowconceptions of women’s empowerment and limit the scope of women’s citizen-ship and political subjectivity. And yet, as feminist scholars have also shown,these constructions of women and nation are situated in particular socio-political and historical moments and always in contestation, shifting overtime and place and both within and ‘outside’ of the boundaries of thenation-state.

Centering these concerns with gender and nationalism, studies of beautypageants have emerged as a rich and interdisciplinary field that views suchcontests not simply as trivial forms of entertainment but as important sitesfor the study of conflicts around gender, race, class, faith, disability and citi-zenship and the production of idealized ‘beautiful’ bodies seen to represent thenation. Theorists have highlighted the contradictions of pageants that publiclycelebrate difference while in fact disciplining bodies into strict norms –promoting liberal, western notions of feminism and empowerment (Banet-Weiser 1999). Beyond the USA, studies examining the globalization of thepageant form have opened up new areas of inquiry. Most notably, Cohenet al.’s (1996) edited collection draws on case studies from Andalusia,Moscow, Tibet, Belize and beyond to highlight their deeply political nature.Whether a competition for the Nicaraguan ‘La India Bonita’, for the ‘MissTibet’ title or in Filipino contests for ‘Miss Gay Super Model of the World’,the editors argue that ‘struggles over beauty contests are also struggles overthe power to control and contain meanings mapped onto the bodies ofcompetitors’ (1996: 9).

Less well explored but particularly relevant here are explorations intodiasporic beauty pageants, those organized by and for migrant, minorityethnic or national groups and held away from ‘home’ in a host country.These pageants have their own important place in defining social norms,reproducing gendered and ethnic ideals and in promoting and imagining adistant home and nation. In this way, they exemplify a form of ‘long-distancenationalism’ – a set of practices that connects a territory, its dispersed popu-lation and its political system and that binds together those in the diaspora and

224 International Feminist Journal of Pol i t ics --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

at home into a ‘single transborder citizenry’ (Glick Schiller 2005: 164). Morebroadly, work on diasporic nationalisms has been valuable in highlightingthe powerful nature of diasporic politics in shaping the homeland nation inproductive and emancipatory, but also sometimes in exclusionary andzealous, ways (Basch et al. 1993; Malkki 1995; Tololyan 1996). Less welldeveloped in such work is an understanding of how resultant expressions ofnationalism and citizenship are gendered including the different roles andresponsibilities assigned or taken up by men and women in diasporic politicalorganizations, the gendering of diasporic citizenship, or ways in which thepolitics of the body and nation are often connected in diasporic nationalistdiscourses (Werbner 2005). Transnational theorists have begun to recognizethe importance of addressing this gap and a range of research has providedgendered analyses of transnational and diasporic identity (for exampleMatthei and Smith 1998; Ong 2003; Pessar and Mahler 2003). Particularlyrich examples can be drawn from studies of beauty pageants, includingMani’s (2006) work on the US-based Indian diaspora, Siu’s (2005) study ofthe Chinese diaspora in Central America and Wu’s (1997) work on theChinese diaspora in the USA. These scholars have highlighted how contestants,organizers and audience members often view diasporic contests as an oppor-tunity to claim greater acceptance and tolerance in one’s host country, as aform of resistance, or as an expression of (a particularly raced, faithed andclassed) ethnic or national authenticity and connection to ‘home’ (Barnes1994; Wu 1997; Mani 2006). Such pageants can also operate to promoteand raise awareness around a particular and specifically national politicaland cultural identity and to claim diasporic citizenship and belonging,while, at once, revealing contestations amongst the diasporic communityand between the diaspora and home (Siu 2005).

In this article I extend the work on diasporic beauty pageants and diasporicnationalism by arguing that the Miss South Sudan pageant is powerfullyimplicated in the diasporic construction of a new, South Sudanese, nation.I highlight the construction of Miss South Sudan as an idealized role modeland national representative, with a politically and historically rooted faithand race based understanding of beauty. This idealized woman is placed ina contradictory position, straddling ideals of tradition and modernity; main-taining conservative gender roles as a mother to future generations of SouthSudan, yet also embracing the educational and career aspirations of a moderngirl. She must carefully negotiate these different expectations in order torepresent the new nation as true to its South Sudanese values while alsoorientated, as the new Government of South Sudan is, to the West. Thus, inthe diasporic space of the pageant, I argue that some well-establishedideals for women are reproduced but that there is also a very public reworkingand re-imagining of women’s roles in contemporary nation-building efforts.The contest reveals productive debates in the diaspora around what it meansto be a woman, to be modern and empowered and indeed to be SouthSudanese. While overtly seeking to smooth over these differences and


disputes, the pageant also reveals and deepens these fissures, highlighting theuneven and contradictory processes of nation-building at work in thediaspora.

POLITICS AND PAGEANTS: DIASPORIC NATIONALISM AND THESTAGING(S) OF MISS SOUTH SUDAN

This occasion may seem trivial. It is not. It is a great event that has put ourunknown land on the spot-light world-wide.3

Pageants are often seen by organizers, participants and audience members as away to re-imagine a nation and its people in a public fashion (Borland 1996;Mani 2006; Bardsley 2008). The words of one of the 2006 pageant guestspeakers quoted above speak to the keen desire of the pageant organizers topromote a new and positive image of the Sudan internationally; one thatcan move beyond, or at least complicate a little, the overwhelmingly dominantperception of the country as lost in war. Indeed, a key motivation for organi-zers was the promotion of a new South Sudan that challenged enduringstereotypes about the region and its people as violent and culturally stymiedby conflict (interview 9 February 2008; see also Miroff 2006). Unfortunately,Sudan is in fact far from an ‘unknown land’ in the international politicalarena and is a country which has for decades been associated with slavery,corruption, famine and most recently genocide. With the exception of adecade of peace between 1972 and 1983 the Republic of Sudan has beenembroiled in an intractable civil conflict rooted in power relations from theCondominium period of British-Egyptian rule, exacerbated along ethnic,regional and religious lines of difference and heightened by the competitionfor land, cattle, water, gold and, most recently, oil wealth (Hutchinson 2001;Johnson 2006; Shandy 2007). One of the most contentious questions ofgovernance has centered on religion and politics with conflicting desiresfor either an Islamic or secular Sudanese state. The dominant parties inthe Government of Sudan (GoS) have historically defended centralizedKhartoum-orientated control and the imposition of Islamic law and theArabic language throughout the country. In contrast, opposition groupsfrom the South have sought either greater southern autonomy within theState, or complete secession and independence with a call for greater religiousfreedom and a secular political system (Wondu and Lesch 2000).

The civil war in South Sudan has led to the displacement of at least fourmillion people both internally and internationally (Benesova and Dejorio2005)4 with the USA emerging as one of the largest receiver countrieshosting approximately 150,000 Southern Sudanese (GoSS US Mission,personal communication 13 March 2009). The majority of Southern Sudaneseentering the USA from the early 1990s on did so as political refugees fleeingfrom the conflict, often arriving after many years in transition in Egypt or


in refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Between 1990 and 1997 some of themain communities of Sudanese refugees were in Texas, Tennessee, New York,South Dakota, Minnesota and California with smaller populations in Georgia,Virginia, Washington, Arizona and North Dakota (Shandy 2007). Today theSouth Sudanese diaspora includes refugees and family members who laterjoined them and may not hold refugee status, as well as their new generationof children. Many maintain close personal and professional connections tofamilies and communities in the Sudan and in other areas of the worldthrough remittances, the support of political parties or movements, economicties to property or investments, and social and cultural connections includingtransnational marriages, the sponsoring of family and friends for visas andvisits to the Sudan following births and deaths (Shandy 2007). In this waymembers of the diaspora demonstrate a sense of a ‘transmigrant identity’(Glick Schiller and Fouron 2001) rooted in a dual positioning and engagement,socially, politically, economically and culturally, with both the nation states oforigin and destination.

After the long history of scattered conflict and failed resolution, the Com-prehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) established a fragile peace. The CPAinstalled power-sharing protocols and granted a new measure of autonomyfor the South including the creation of a new Southern Government. Thisushered in a new political relationship between the Republic of Sudan andthe South. Along with its semi-autonomous status, the North and Southremain politically and economically connected with the formation of theGovernment of National Unity with two Vice-President positions – one ofwhich is currently taken up by the President of the new Government ofSouth Sudan. A key aspect of the CPA is the opportunity for Southern self-determination with all Southerners, including those in the diaspora, invitedto participate in a referendum on independence tentatively scheduled for2011. The contemporary period of peace is a historic moment for SouthernSudanese men and women and one that extends to those living outside thecountry. Many in the diaspora are already actively debating and participatingin the nation-building process through on-line listserves, community fund-raisers and educational efforts, or through the many political party chaptersacross the USA. Moreover, grassroots diasporic organizations are working toeducate Sudanese men and women in the diaspora about the election andreferendum (interview 13 March 2009). These efforts in the USA are coordi-nated and/or supported by the Office for Social, Cultural and ConsularAffairs in the GoSS mission5 in Washington, DC.

The Miss South Sudan beauty pageant is one more example of long-distancenationalism ongoing in the diaspora. Led by the organizing efforts of an execu-tive committee based out of Washington, DC, the first US based pageant eventwas held there in 2006 and in Kansas City in 2007, two cities chosen for theirhigh concentrations of, or proximity to, large South Sudanese communities.In 2008 the event was held in Atlanta, Georgia and will be held again inWashington, DC in 2009 (interview 9 January 2008). Like other forms of


diasporic nationalist activity, the pageant receives some financial support fromthe GoSS mission in Washington, DC (interview 9 January 2008) and appointedgovernment representatives at the mission have participated in the event asspeakers and judges, serving to highlight the Government’s interest in engagingthe US based diaspora and in particular in the empowerment of women whileadding a sheen of state-based legitimacy to the event (interview 4 February2008). Although the winners have received little in financial rewards fortheir crown, they have been invited to attend and speak at a range of commu-nity based Southern Sudanese events across the USA, where their work haslargely been to promote unity and women’s equality within the diaspora (inter-view 10 April 2008). Crossing civil society and state lines, the first Miss SouthSudan was also promoted to an administrative position in the GoSS Missionoffice where she acts as the public face of the mission for visitors.

The pageant is one of several such events that have emerged within the SouthSudanese diasporas in the USA, Canada and Australia in recent years – andmirrors South Sudanese beauty pageants that have begun to be hosted againin Sudan. Contributors to diasporic listserves and media sites were full ofpride and praise for Rebecca Yom Chor when she was awarded the title ofMiss Malaika/South Sudan in 2005, an event held in Nairobi, Kenya justmonths following the signing of the peace agreement. The pageant washosted again in 2007 and 2008, this time in the South itself and drew partici-pants from each of the ten states of the South as well as Abyei, a contestedregion on the border with the North. The event is used to highlight the sustainedpeace, unity and reconstruction in the region and is well attended by govern-ment representatives and advisors and Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement(SPLM) senior officials, as well as the public and state visitors. In the diaspora, anumber of pageants have been created or are in the works in Calgary, Canada,one of which is organized by the US based group (interview 9 January 2008)and another run by the Southern Sudanese Association of Alberta while theevent took off in Australia during the same year as the US based event, withthe first Miss South Sudan-Australia crowned in 2006 in Melbourne. Neitherthe Australian nor Canadian pageants receive the Government support thatthe US based event does. Otherwise, the events have many commonalities,with a strong nationalist emphasis on unity within the South and a positioningof contestants as not only beautiful but educated about the culture and politicsof their nascent country. While all share similar interview questions on politics,ways to resolve poverty and how participants will vote in the referendum theyare also adapted to the locale, with women in the USA asked what they wouldask of President George Bush if they had five minutes of his time, and thosebased in South Sudan asked what their priorities for reconstruction wouldbe. Moreover, the Miss Malaika/South Sudan contest based in Sudan empha-sized heavily traditional costume, with girls parading in outfits that rep-resented their particular region. In contrast in the diasporic competitions, thegirls were more likely to wear western gowns, although in 2008 in the USbased competition, a Southern Sudanese designer was introduced to create


contemporary African dresses for the girls to showcase. Nevertheless, all thepageants emphasize the importance of beauty, talent and intelligence with astrong nationalist element with the Australian promoters arguing ‘Our beliefis strong and rich national identity, whereby all South Sudanese children ident-ifies themselves as “South Sudanese” above all else’.6

Although there has been some critique of the pageant form as an importfrom the West (see, for example, Riaka 2007), some interviewees suggestedinstead that this represents a renaissance of a well-established Sudanesetradition of competition among women, both for individual benefit but alsoto build connections within and between communities. For example one ofthe pageant judges and advisors noted that:

In my grandmother’s time they had competitions about beauty. They would eventhey compete on the dancing floor . . . but because of the era we grew up in [ofconflict] we did not know about these things. In Sudan in twenty-two yearswe could have had these events but we did not see [them]. We think that SouthernSudan is that way, conservative, but no! It is a lost era – we should have seensomething but we didn’t see it. But for me beauty was there. Women love beauty!

(Interview 4 February 2008)

Thus the pageant form has returned in recent years to Southerners bothat home and in the diaspora, mirroring through the bodies of women, theformation of the new body of the South Sudanese nation.

ENVISIONING THE NATION: ROLE MODELS FOR A NEW SOUTH SUDAN

Think you’ve got what it takes?7

In the Miss South Sudan-USA contest, the prized (and prize-winning) body isboth that of the pageant performer and the more abstract body of the idealSouth Sudanese Woman they are seen to represent. There are parallels herewith Ruiz’s (2002: 285) study of the Miss India Bonita pageant in Mexico inthe 1920s where she argues ‘the figure of feminine woman emerge(s) as criticalresources for nationalists’. Highlighting how the national body is oftenthought through the body of a woman, Banet-Weiser (1999: 8) notes:

The ‘nation’ . . . is formulated as an abstraction, and one is not necessarily com-pelled to fight for, to place beliefs within, or to give one’s life for an abstraction.Rather we are compelled by desires. Thus any concept of the nation must inciteparticular desires in its public to remain a legitimate institutionalized system ofbeliefs and practices . . . [and] idealized figures of femininity have long beenunderstood as a lucrative avenue for desire.

Women thus become a tangible way to envision the nation, constructed inidealized national forms that provide tangible bodies over which national


pride may be expressed, and hope for a new South Sudanese future may beinvested. This is certainly so in the Miss South Sudan beauty contest whichis organized, according to the mission statement, to ‘create new role modelswho through the beauty pageant will serve as ambassadors that will define anew South Sudan’.8 Here women are explicitly positioned as representativesfor the nation, a sentiment that was repeated during the pageant performancesand in discussion prior to and following the event. One listserve memberunderlined the responsibility of the 2006 pageant winner, Miss CeceliaAdeng, to be a role model for other South Sudanese women and to representtheir nation appropriately:

We would like to see our young girls rising up to their full potential because thefuture of South Sudan desperately lies in their hands and the decisions theymake. Cecilia, continue to maintain the standard of hard work, self worth,dignity, and respect and most of all pass it onto your sisters from South Sudan.9

Participation in the pageant was itself seen as a patriotic act, not simply oneundertaken for personal gain and participants were expected to feel a strongbond for and responsibility toward, South Sudan as a nation. One of theguests at the 2007 pageant explicitly highlighted this in a speech statingthat ‘by taking part in this competition you have shown the great extent towhich you love and cherish our land of South Sudan’.10 The followingremarks made by a pageant participant on the listserve also reflect the under-standing of the event not only as an opportunity for self-promotion but as asense of duty to the South as a nation, rather that to a particular ethnicgroup or region:

I . . . really think that I qualify to represent South Sudan not because of where Iam from, but more on the fact that I love Sudan and I do everything in my powerto represent it and do good things around my southern people and the rest of theworld to raise our heads up as women and as people of South Sudan.11

Given the symbolic weight of their participation, these ‘ambassadors’ thusbear great scrutiny as representatives not only of themselves and theirfamilies, but also of their nation. They must conform to particular faithand race based attributes if they are to act as figureheads. This is particularlypertinent given the history of conflict, which has been rooted in contestationsaround identity. Neat divisions between ‘North’ and ‘South’ Sudan belie thecomplexity of socio-cultural, political and economic connections, andhomogenize ethnically diverse regions as ‘Southern’. Yet colonial and post-colonial histories of the region have produced and maintained faith basedand racialized cultural notions of northerners as Muslim Arabs and orientatedtoward North Africa and the Middle East, and of the South as primarilyChristian and part of Sub-Saharan Africa (Deng 1995). This simplified butmeaningful construction of difference is powerful in producing imaginaries


of a sealed and unified South Sudanese nation – a process at work throughthe pageant in the construction of particularly faithed and raced SouthSudanese ideal bodies.

First here, adherence to Christianity is an important part of the ideal SouthSudanese role model and offers a glimpse into the ongoing struggles withinSudan that have indelibly shaped the conflict. Christian faith has becomeone key marker of Southern nationalism given that historically, fundamental-ist Islamic groups have encouraged or led the Government of Sudan’s mostaggressive responses to Southern resistance (Deng 1995; Johnson 2006).Faith based cultural differences have developed since the sixteenth centurywhen Islamic traders began to trade and settle in the North. Although therewere some links between the North and South through trade and slaveraiding, the geography of the region restricted larger Islamic settlementwithin southern areas and the spread of Islam here was far more restricted.Under British-Egyptian rule, the practice of Islam in the North was permittedbut Christian missionary education was banned there, instead focusing theirwork unevenly in the South. In 1964, after independence, missionaries wereofficially excluded from the country and efforts were made by the Governmentto Islamize the South. However, the spread of Christianity in fact acceleratedover this period (Jok 1999; Peterson and Allman 1999 in Shandy 2007) andsince the 1980s adherence to Christianity has also grown in connection withthe expansion of US rooted Evangelical missionary work. Within the diaspora,faith has also been shaped by the important role of Christian resettlementorganizations and churches in assisting new Southern Sudanese refugees intheir transition to the USA (Shandy 2007). Thus faith remains a significantsite of contention and conflict and division in Sudan and the diaspora and apowerful and productive marker of difference through which to produce theSouth Sudanese nation. The centrality of faith was evident at both the 2006and 2007 pageants where speakers referenced faith throughout and judgesand commentators centered a strong Christian faith as a vital part of anyprospective winner. Participants in turn often referred to religious beliefsand a commitment to Christianity during their interview sections. Thesepublic displays of faith and references to Christianity work to reify thenotion of a South Sudanese identity as one rooted in Christian beliefs anddirected by one’s faith.

Second, the ideal South Sudanese woman is also raced in a way thatconnects her to the South (as opposed to the North) of Sudan. The South is aregion imagined as culturally and pheno-typically orientated toward Sub-Saharan Africa while the North is associated with an Arab influence and alighter skin tone12 (Deng 1995). These racialized distinctions permeated thepageant discourse to produce, at once, a particularly racialized South Sudanesenation distinct from the North, and to link South Sudan to a broaderSub-Saharan African identity. The 2006 winner highlighted the significanceof her choice to look ‘natural’ and wear her hair in simple cornrows statingthat ‘I didn’t want to wear makeup or a weave for my hair. I wanted to look


like a Southerner. It’s got to be you being you’ (interview 10 April 2008).Listserve debates after the 2006 pageant closely linked race and beautydemonstrating a pride in ‘true’ African beauty that centered ‘blackness’ anddid not celebrate lighter tones which were deemed to be less ‘authentically’African – particularly if there were suspicions that this was induced bylightening creams. Entitling her email response to the pageant ‘Black isBeauty’ one member noted:

One of the contestants was asked, if I can remember correctly, ‘What do you seeor like when you look yourself up in the mirror?’ She replied, ‘I see my beautifulblack skin’. It was a powerful message to our young girls to preserve their naturalbeauty given to them by God. We have much to learn from these young beautyqueens.13

Another, also stressing the importance for Southern Sudanese young womenof a notion of ‘beauty’ rooted in African rather than western ideals, argued:

The key is not only educating our children that black is beautiful, but also edu-cating those in our society who set beauty standards. Why do I say so? Because atthe end of the day no matter how much self-esteem we instill in our kids and tellthem ‘Black is Beautiful’, beauty contests such as Miss Africa, Miss America, MissUniverse, Miss World etc. are always picking light skinned contestants as thewinner.14

Interestingly, the debates touch upon a more generalized sense of racialdifference and pride that mirrors, and is perhaps informed by, debates overAfrican American beauty pageants in the 1960s (Banks 2000; Craig 2002:104–8). Here African nationalist discourses shaped notions of beauty, includ-ing women’s hairstyles, with unstraightened hair emerging after 1966 as asymbol of racial pride (Craig 2002: 73). So too do the debates around MissSouth Sudan speak to the racially inflected experiences of South Sudanesein the US based diaspora where they have faced challenges of racism inmany forms (Abusharaf 2002 in Shandy 2007). In response to the MissSouth Sudan pageant several listserve members congratulated particularparticipants who they felt truly represented their African heritage, forexample in their choice to wear African dresses, to wear their hair in certainways or, as above, to take pride in their skin color. However, others chastisedthose girls who deviated from this ideal, for example in choosing westernclothing or hair fashions. For example, one Sudannet forum member asked,‘Why do they make their hair straight? Are they denying their Africanbeauty?’ with another responding:

Woe to us all in South Sudan for we will either become Westerners or Arabwan-nabees in a matter of 20 years . . . why are we Southern Sudanese becoming easypreys to acculturation everywhere we go? Why do our women and young menabandon our cultures in return for foreign ones?15


Here self-representation, how a woman wears her hair, clothes and makeupand whether she chooses to use skin-lightening creams, is seamlessly con-nected to her representation of the nation.

MOTHERING THE NATION: RESPECTABILTY AND REPRODUCTION

The whole purpose of this pageant is to set a higher standard for our Sudaneseladies and see them be successful in life. Of course I want kids but I want thefather of my children to stay in the same house as me and my husband and Iwant to be able to provide for them.16

In connection to the norms around faith and race participants were alsoexpected to adhere to strict standards of respectability. In line with beautypageants all around the world (Wilk 1996; Thomas 2006; Crawford et al.2008) the Miss South Sudan pageant rules referenced the importance of‘good’ behavior and a respectable background, primarily with regard tomarital status and sexual relations. For example, applicants must neverhave been married,17 nor have a child or be pregnant at the time of theevent. In addition the rules state that contestants must be of ‘good moralcharacter’, ‘shall not have committed any crimes’18 and that anyone actingin a disorderly way would be disqualified. If selected as Miss South Sudan,contestants are also warned that they cannot become pregnant and thatunruly, unbecoming behavior can lead to the loss of their crown. These dic-tates again reveal the importance of the pageant in identifying and promotinga role model for the nation that fits with conservative and established notionsof femininity – one bound up with purity, respectability and self-discipline.These rules speak to the tensions around sexual desirability and motherhood,two key and contradictory ways in which women’s bodies reproduce thenation.

In Lynn Thomas’s (2006: 467; see also Barlow et al. 2005) study of newspa-per based beauty pageants in South Africa in the 1930s she argues that maleeditors also worked to promote an ‘Amarespectable19 urban femininity’where the ideal of respectability became a powerful ideology through whichto reassert control over the unruly ‘Modern Girl’ – a figure emerging in the1930s who eschewed traditional and conservative gender norms. Since theystand in for South Sudan while being beautiful and desirable, the participantsmust uphold the values of respectability, a quality that works, as Mani (2006:725) argues in her study of Miss India, ‘to mediate the relationship betweennationalism and sexuality’ by constructing an appropriate ideal that upholdsthe imagined traditions of women’s sexual purity. For the organizers of theevent it was very important to include these rules to address anxietiesamong the elders in the community that the competition would degradeSouthern Sudanese traditional codes of morality (interview 9 January 2008).It is also one of the main reasons why the bikini swimsuit section of the


pageant has, to date, not been included in the pageant, despite the fact thatseveral organizers support its inclusion.20

Wilk (1996), Mani (2006) and Thomas (2006) each suggest that this emphasison respectability also has class-based undertones, with aspirations to middleclass status often expressed through claims to respectability. Focusing onBelize, Wilk (1996) compares the middle/upper class and primarily Anglo-Belize ‘Queen of the Bay’ beauty pageant with the ‘Queen of the Settlement’which focused on Garifunda identity and links to indigenous folk culture. Inthe former, respectability formed a vitally important attribute for contenderswho must be able to demonstrate they are from ‘good’ and ‘decent’ families(1996: 220). In contrast, requirements for the Queen of the settlementfocused on a participant’s ability to speak Garifunda, to know folk cultureand to perform traditional dances (1996: 221). In the Miss South Sudanpageant, participants were expected to satisfy both arenas: to demonstratetheir ongoing cultural connection to ‘home’ in the South but also to be respect-able, which was primarily coded in terms of behavior and sexual conduct.These competing expectations came into conflict in particular around thedecision to exclude mothers from the contest. Those in support of the rulesaround motherhood argued that they were put in place to ensure the winnerwas a good role model. One suggests clearly that motherhood at a youngage was not appropriate or respectable for female role models of the SouthSudan:

I appreciate the idea of excluding young mothers from this pageant. It has nothingto do with punishing them . . . but it has more to do with a standard needing to beset. Setting a standard defines the meaning of doing this pageant . . . You knowvery well that to have children out of wedlock is a sign of moral weakness.We as a society continue to love them because they are part of us. However thestandard is the main reason why we must have no mothers . . . why should Ispend my money to go and see someone else’s mother. That is the big questionto be answered by a mother who wants to participate.21

This respondent’s closing remarks also reveal Miss South Sudan’s position-ing as an object of desire – a quality diminished, it is assumed, by motherhood.However, others disputed the exclusion of mothers, which they argued contra-dicted the claims made by the organization that the pageant aimed to promoteSouth Sudanese culture and values. For them, motherhood was a valued part ofwomen’s responsibility in the community and it should not be seen as a barrierto participation. For example, one participant who had been excluded from thepageant in the late stages argued, ‘I feel it is NOT FAIR because there are a lot ofour girls that have kids at a young age. Why should they be punished?’22

Another added:

We all know Sudanese girls get married at a young age. Some of them aremarried and they have their kids . . . Children are a gift from God and we


should not punish our girls for having these gifts. We are losing a lot of youngpeople to this country [USA] and we should encourage them to be part of ourcountry.23

Of course, the debates around the exclusion of mothers do not negate thefact that motherhood is still seen as a central and vitally important preoccupa-tion of women, even if Miss South Sudan must juggle this responsibility withher desire for further education. Although the rules state that participantscannot be mothers at the time of the competition, their bodies are still verymuch viewed as the future and expectant site of national reproduction, quiteliterally as the locus for the birth of the new nation in the next generation.One speaker called on the participants to keep the purity of South Sudanintact, clearly highlighting their responsibility as bearers of children toavoid ‘diluting’ this national identity by involving themselves with thosefrom outside of South Sudan. The speaker demanded of the participants:‘Make sure you do not throw away your beauty. It belongs to South Sudanand to a South Sudanese it should go . . . If you know what I mean.’24 An elec-tronic version of this speech submitted to Sudanese listserves received bothcritical and supportive responses. One of these argued that Southern womencould not always be expected to marry Southern men – particularly giventhe high rates of trauma and the problems of domestic violence and alcohol-ism. In doing so the writer challenged the responsibility placed upon women asreproducers of the nation and instead centered the promotion of a healthy andhappy relationship. In response the original speech-maker seemed both toagree but also to reinforce the earlier position, stating that:

A good marriage/family life is based on love, respect and mutual understandingand is a basis for a good and successful community and hence a better nation.Our society is very much degraded today because of failing marriages and as aresult we cannot expect to succeed as a nation of South Sudan without strongfamily ties. Therefore marriage is either our stronghold or a big hold of weaknessthat will make us fail as a nation.25

These debates reveal the contradictory demands on Miss South Sudanpageant participants to be respectable and sexually well-behaved, delayingmotherhood and aspiring to an education and a career, while also retaininga responsibility as mothers and as reproducers of the nation. Again,women’s bodies become a site of contestation and of somewhat contradictorynationalist imperatives.

MODERNIZING THE NATION: DISPUTES AROUND EMPOWERMENT

We want to see our girls come up, to come out of the dark and define them-selves.26


Just as pageants reinforce norms of tradition, so too can they work to troublethem – and in doing so represent self and nation as modern (Borland 1996;Johnson 1996; Crawford et al. 2008). As I have argued the pageant was orga-nized in the year following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreementand the formation of the new Government of South Sudan, the Miss SouthSudan pageants were thus held at a significant juncture in the history of thenation – a point when a new political future for the South was being made.This was also a moment in which the role of women in this process was beingrenegotiated and, to a certain extent, acknowledged – a new representationof women as modern and empowered that was reproduced through thepageant. Throughout war and peace, Southern Sudanese women have beeninvolved in varied ways in producing and defending an unstable and shiftingnotion of the new Sudanese nation; providing food and shelter to resistancefighters, taking up arms themselves in Sudanese People’s Liberation Army(SPLA) women’s battalion, working in locally organized civil society initiatives(Jok 1999; Ringera 2007) and playing vital roles in grassroots peace initiat-ives.27 And yet despite these efforts, the vital and active contributions ofsouthern Sudanese women toward nation-building in Sudan’s conflict havecommonly been de-valued, essentialized or otherwise marginalized. Insteadwomen are positioned in the narrative of war in Sudan as victims (Ringera2007), iconic symbols of threatened cultural, racial and regional heritage, orthrough accounts of rape or women’s slavery, as the battleground for conflict– indeed forming part of the territory over which the war has been fought(Ringera 2007; elsewhere see Yuval-Davis 1997 and Enloe 2000). Under JohnGarang’s leadership the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army(SPLM/A) ostensibly emphasized gendered, alongside racial, ethnic and reli-gious, equality as a central part of its efforts against the Government ofSudan. Moreover, the new constitution of the South includes several clausesthat explicitly address women’s equality and in particular the need for reformin the legal, political and educational spheres. This period is thus seen notonly as one of momentous political change but also one of social changearound gender and women’s rights. The pageant organizers sought to capturethis new articulation of the South as modern through the presentation ofwomen as empowered and modern individuals orientated outwards to theworld, envisioning that the event would ‘empower women through educationand globalization’. The mission statement mirrors these themes stating thatthe organization aims to:

promote education and seek the global advancement of South Sudan women . . .

it is an idea to introduce women to the world . . . [to] enrich the beauty of theSouth Sudanese woman and enhance a new strength, energy and spirit for theadvancement of South Sudan women.28

In addition to their beauty, the pageant organizers sought to demonstrate theintelligence of South Sudanese women, with contestants regularly referencingtheir pursuit of education and their interest in careers in professions such as law


and medicine. Organizers claimed that through the pageant ‘you will gain poise,self-confidence and valuable communication skills. You’ll feel good aboutyourself and gain the competitive edge to succeed later in whatever field youmay choose from modeling to business’.29 These aspirations speak to a distinctlymiddle class ideal for the South Sudanese woman, one that is an importantmarker for the diaspora following years of lost opportunities for educationduring the years of conflict and the sense that education offers an avenue toindividual and national freedoms. These aspirations to middle class status areseen as key markers of the empowered woman, one who is able to embraceboth the traditional responsibilities of womanhood in the domestic sphere butwho can also take advantage of the opportunities available in the USA. Thisversion of empowerment focuses on self-improvement toward greater inclusionin South Sudanese political and social life, rather than a perhaps more radicalversion of empowerment that might emphasize collective mobilizationagainst structural oppressions. As Crawford et al. note ‘by making what theysee as an individual, assertive choice to participate, they believe they aregaining an opportunity to enhance poise, self-confidence, and self-esteem,and to become empowered, independent, liberated, and “modern”’ (Crawfordet al. 2008 : 64–65. See also Ahmed-Ghosh 2003).

Thus this positioning of South Sudanese women as well-educated, intelli-gent and globalized serves to address negative stereotypes of Sudanesewomen, and the region, as backward or pre-modern while producing a particu-lar kind of acceptable empowerment for women in the post-conflict period.However, though the birthing of a new modern south Sudan is central to thenationalist discourse on display through the pageant, what this modernitymeans for women is disputed, particularly by those who argue that empower-ment should be a far more radical and progressive process. For example, someSudanese women’s rights activists criticized the pageant, reacting to the notionthat it represented a positive way to empower women (personal communi-cation 24 August 2007). In particular there was dissent around the decisionof the Government of South Sudan’s US Mission in Washington, DC, tosupport the event and to hire the 2006 winner in an administrative positionwhich some welcomed as evidence of the efforts of the new Governmenttoward gender equality while others saw this as an act of tokenism that didnot alter the established balance of gender power in the Government.30 Amember of a South Sudanese organization promoting women’s rights in thediaspora, argued that western feminists had long criticized the pageant formitself as degrading to women, offering only a very limited and short-sightedvision of women’s empowerment and that South Sudanese women and menneeded to recognize this critique. In her discussion she asked:

Why are these pageants going international? . . . Women in the West are gettingsmarter in distinguishing that there’s no relationship whatsoever between strip-ping women of their clothes and putting them half naked on stage and women’sempowerment or self-confidence, not even women’s ‘choice of freedom’. Thus,


the pageant industry became in desperate need for a breath of fresh air, a fertilesoil and a productive market. Where else but the impoverished Third World! Sowhen an African or Asian is crowned to be Miss World or Miss Universe, itdoesn’t mean the West is running out of tall-skinny-blonde-blue-eyed women.What it means is that we, the newcomers to the Club of Women’s Freedom andWomen’s Empowerment, have a lot of thinking to do . . . I hope that our Govern-ment does not mistake Miss South Sudan for one of the positions [reserved forwomen] or that it’s part of the 25%!31

In contrast a government representative and advisor for the pageantsupported claims that the event was empowering and suggested that criticismof the event was overly conservative. She argued:

We have got some Sudanese who think that we have just got this idea from wes-terners and that we are just using the girls – like it is a sexual event. You goexpose yourself and you call yourself beauty? Beauty is not from the outside!And they say why is the government involved? . . . Women should be able toappreciate themselves. Come together and build solidarity and create networksso that when these people go back to their communities they will be able to goback and create friendship . . . So for me I look beyond all of this rigid culture.

(Interview 4 February 2008)

These disputes highlight the ways in which the pageant reinforces the binaryof tradition/modernity yet also troubles it, constructing an ideal SouthSudanese Woman who can respect and adhere to authentic South Sudanesecultural traditions and norms while negotiating the modern world of theUSA. This effort highlights divisions and contestations within the communityaround notions of modernity, women’s equality and empowerment that areinsightful and reveal ongoing tensions around the promotion of genderequality in the new South Sudanese constitution.

CONCLUSIONS

In the weeks surrounding the 2007 Miss South Sudan pageant, articles describ-ing the event ran alongside the more typical news stories in Southern Sudaneselistserves and online newspapers. Calls to control corruption in the militarywere replaced by debates around definitions of true Sudanese beauty; com-mentary on the ongoing disputes with the Khartoum government overhidden oil profits were followed by debates around the benefits and problemsof skin-lightening creams; and accounts of the violence escalating in Darfurand re-remerging in the Nuba mountains were briefly nudged from thecenter of discussion by debates around the pageant rules that (unfairly?!)excluded mothers. When juxtaposed with these political and economic devel-opments, the event seems (perhaps refreshingly) frivolous and deeply removedfrom the daily realities of South Sudanese struggles. However, as I have argued


here, the trivial, everyday and seemingly localized staging of representationand identity can be very valuable in revealing key concerns and powerrelations at the state and international scale and reproducing, or troubling,the political, social and economic status quo. These debates over women’sbodies; how they should look, where they should be and what they can doallude to the different ideas of appropriate gender roles and responsibilitiesthat are emerging in the diaspora in the post-conflict era.

Thus, rather than an apolitical event, the Miss South Sudan pageant hasemerged as a contentious site for discussion among the diaspora and an impor-tant part of the contemporary process of nation-building, revealing the desire inthe diaspora for a unified, socially progressive and modern new South Sudan. AsI have argued, this nationalism is distinctly gendered and the conflicts overwomen in the Miss South Sudan contest highlight, after Banet-Weiser (1999:159 emphases in original), the ways in which ‘the beauty pageant provides uswith a site to witness the gendered construction of national identity . . . asboth a statement of the gendered nation and the feminine body as nationalist’.In the discourse around the Miss South Sudan pageants women and Woman-hood are productive resources through which nationalism can be expressed,offering as an alternative to the intangible and removed imaginary of thebody of the nation, very real bodies; sisters, mothers, grandmothers, wives,daughters that the community can claim as their own, can fight to protectand can charge with responsibility for the next generation. Significantly forSouth Sudan in this vital period preceding the referendum on independencein 2011, they are also bodies whose hopeful future the people of South Sudancan be compelled to vote for and in whom they can envision a future.

Caroline FariaVisiting Instructor

Geography DepartmentDartmouth College

Hanover, NH03755, USA

E-mail: [email protected]

Notes

1 Speech extract from the first Miss South Sudan pageant, June 2006. www.

misssouthsudan.com/thewordmotive.htm (accessed January 2008).

2 www.misssouthsudan.com/ (accessed January 2008).

3 Guest speech at the first Miss South Sudan Pageant, June 2006. www.

misssouthsudan.com/thewordmotive.htm (accessed January 2008).

4 Although difficult to estimate accurately, there were approximately 527,000

Southern Sudanese living outside of the country in 2007, a reduction from


www.misssouthsudan.com/thewordmotive.htm


www.misssouthsudan.com/



635,000 just before the peace agreement was signed as refugees have begun to

return home (UNHCR 2008).

5 Given its semi-autonomous but not yet sovereign state, South Sudan does not have

a formal embassy in Washington, DC, but instead a ‘mission’ which carries out a

very similar function.

6 www.misssouthsudan.com.au/organisation.php (accessed January 2008).

7 Miss South Sudan promoters encourage (certain) women to enter the 2007 event.

Available at www.misssouthsudan.com/beautycontest.htm (accessed January

2008).

8 www.misssouthsudan.com/missionsstatement.htm (accessed January 2008).

9 Listserve communication 17 June 2006 (accessed January 2008).

10 www.misssouthsudan.com/the wordandthemotive.htm (accessed January 2008).

11 Listserve communication 23 April 2007 (accessed January 2008).

12 Although a powerfully raced imaginary, these racial attributes do not in reality fit

rigidly with ethnic identity, such that for example many Sudanese men and

women who identify as ‘Arabic’ may still be very dark-skinned.

13 Listserve communication 19 July 2007 (accessed January 2008).

14 Listserve communication 19 July 2007 (accessed January 2008).

15 Website forum communication 11 August 2007. Available at www.sudanforum.

net (accessed January 2008).


17 Interestingly, in Peter Alegi’s (2008) recent work on a contest for garment factory

workers in South Africa he notes that the contest had no such restrictions on

marital status or motherhood. The only condition for entry was membership in

the union. He suggests that this inclusive format works to position the pageant

as a ‘training ground for self-governance and informal democratic practice’

(2008: 39), inculcating women without restriction into a ‘patriotic capitalism’

and in providing the women who organized and participated in the event a

greater sense of ownership and control.

18 www.misssouthsudan.com (accessed January 2008).

19 The term ‘Amarespectable’ is derived from Xhosa and English and was used to

denote those Africans who embraced mission Christianity and held elite ambitions

(Thomas 2006: 466).

20 The option for a swimsuit section is widely contested and unresolved in the

diaspora. The Miss South Sudan website even had a page where viewers could

vote on its inclusion in the 2008 pageant. One organizer seemed keen to include

it, but was sensitive to the delicacy of the issue (interview 9 January 2008).







27 Including the Wunlit People to People Peace Process held in 1993, a grassroots

effort to heal internal conflicts within the southern Sudan following the 1991


www.misssouthsudan.com.au/organisation.php

www.misssouthsudan.com/beautycontest.htm

www.misssouthsudan.com/missionsstatement.htm

www.misssouthsudan.com/the

www.sudanforum.net

www.sudanforum.net

www.misssouthsudan.com

factional split of the SPLM/A, which brought together 800 delegates, one-third of

whom were women.

28 www.misssouthsudan.com/home (accessed January 2008).

29 www.misssouthsudan.com/home (accessed January 2008).

30 However, women’s rights advocates also supported the pageant and representa-

tives of the South Sudan Women’s Empowerment Network, a well-recognized

women’s rights group, were invited to speak at the 2006 and 2007 events.

31 This ‘25%’ refers to the new constitution of the South Sudan created after the

signing of the CPA which states that a quarter of all positions in the formal politi-

cal sphere must be held by women (listserve communication 20 March 2007

(accessed January 2008)).

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Cynthia Enloe, Lucy Jarosz, Lynn Thomas and JanBardsley, and to the three anonymous reviewers, for their helpful commentsand suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. In addition I would like tothank the Miss South Sudan-USA pageant judges, participants and organizerswho took time to complete interviews with me and who allowed me access topageant materials. This research was in part supported by the Cultural Geogra-phy and Africa Specialty Groups of the Association of American Geographers.

References

Ahmed-Ghosh, H. 2003. ‘Writing the Nation on the Beauty Queen’s Body: Implications

for a “Hindu” Nation’, Meridians 4: 205–27.

Alegi, P. 2008. ‘Rewriting Patriarchal Scripts: Women, Labor, and Popular Culture in

South African Clothing Industry Beauty Contests, 1970s–2005’, Journal of Social

History 42 (1): 31–56.

Banet-Weiser, J. 1999. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and

National Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Banks, I. 2000. Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women’s Consciousness.

New York: New York University Press.

Bardsley, J. 2008. ‘Girl Royalty: The 1959 Coronation of Japan’s First Miss Universe’,

Asian Studies Review 32 (3): 375–91.

Barlow, T., Yue Dong, M., Poiger, U., Ramamurthy, P., Thomas, L. and Weinbaum, A. E.

2005. ‘The Modern Girl around the World: A Research Agenda and Preliminary

Findings’, Gender & History 17 (2): 245–94.

Barnes, N. B. 1994. ‘Face of the Nation, Race, Nationalisms and Identities in Jamaican

Beauty Pageants’, Massachusetts Review 35 (3–4): 471–92.

Basch, L., Glick Schiller, N. and Szanton Blanc, C. 1993. Nations Unbound: Transna-

tional Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation States.

Reading: Gordon & Breach.


www.misssouthsudan.com/home

www.misssouthsudan.com/home

Benesova, S. and Dejorio, R. 2005. ‘Southern Sudanese Women in the Diaspora’, Osprey

Journal of Ideals and Inquiry IV (Spring): 1–12. Available at http://www.unf.edu/

dept/honors/osprey_journal/archives/2005/index.html.

Borland, K. 1996. ‘The India Bonita of Monimbo: The Politics of Ethnic Identity in

the New Nicaragua’, in Cohen, C., Wilk, R. and Stoeltje, B. (eds) Beauty Queens

on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests and Power, pp. 75–88. New York:

Routledge.

Cohen, C., Wilk, R. and Stoeltje, B. 1996. ‘Introduction: Beauty Queens on the Global

Stage’, in Cohen, C., Wilk, R. and Stoeltje, B. (eds) Beauty Queens on the Global

Stage: Gender, Contests and Power, pp. 1–12. New York: Routledge.

Craig, M. L. 2002. Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of

Race. New York: Oxford University Press.

Crawford, M., Kerwin, G., Gurung, A., Khati, D., Jha, P. and Regimi, A. 2008. ‘Globaliz-

ing Beauty: Attitudes toward Beauty Pageants among Nepali Women’, Feminism

and Psychology 18 (1): 61–86.

Deng, F. 1995. War of Visions: Conflict of Identity in the Sudan. Washington, DC: The

Brookings Institution.

Enloe, C. 2000. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives.

Berkeley, CA & London: University of California Press.

Glick Schiller, N. 2005. ‘Transborder Citizenship: An Outcome of Legal Pluralism within

Transnational Social Fields’, Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis.

Paper 25.

Glick Schiller, N. and Fouron, G. 2001. Georges Woke Up Laughing: Long Distance

Nationalism and the Search for Home. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Hutchinson, S. 2001. ‘A Curse from God? Religious and Political Dimensions of the Post

1991 Rise of Ethnic Violence in South Sudan’, Journal of Modern African Studies 39

(2): 307–33.

Johnson, D. 2006. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars (Updated to the Peace

Agreement) (3rd ed.). Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.

Johnson, M. 1996. ‘Negotiating Style and Mediating Beauty: Transvestite (Gay/Banut)

Beauty Contests in the Southern Philippines’, in Cohen, C., Wilk, R. and Stoeltje, B.

(eds) Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests and Power, pp. 89–104.

New York: Routledge.

Jok, J. M. 1999. ‘Research Communication: Militarization and Gender Violence in

South Sudan’, Journal of African and Asian Studies 34 (4): 427–44.

McClintock, A. 1991. ‘“No Longer in a Future Heaven”: Women and Nationalism in

South Africa’, Transition 51: 104–23.

Malkki, L. 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology among

Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago, IL & London: University of Chicago Press.

Mani, B. 2006. ‘Beauty Queens: Gender, Ethnicity and Transnational Modernities at the

Miss India USA Pageant’, Positions 14 (3): 718–45.

Matthei, L. and Smith, D. 1998. ‘Belizean “Boyz ’n the Hood”? Garifuna Labor Migration

and Transnational Identity’, in Smith, P. and Guarnizo, L. (eds) Transnationalism

from Below, pp. 270–90. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.


http://www.unf.edu/dept/honors/osprey_journal/archives/2005/index.html



Mayer, T. 2000. ‘Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage’, in Mayer, T. (ed.)

Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, pp. 1–24. London & New York:

Routledge.

Miroff, N. 2006. ‘Hopes for a Brighter Image of Sudan: Beauty Pageant Contenders

Travel from across the United States, Canada and Australia’. Washington Post, 18

June. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/

06/17/AR2006061700889.html.

Ong, A. 2003. Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America. Berkeley, CA,

Los Angeles, CA & London: University of California Press.

Pessar, P. and Mahler, S. 2003. ‘Transnational Migration: Bringing Gender In’,

International Migration Review 37 (3): 812–47.

Riaka, L. G. 2007. ‘Miss Malaika is a Threat to Southern Sudanese Cultures’. Sudan

Tribune, 7 December. Available at http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?

article25073.

Ringera, K. L. 2007. ‘Excluded Voices: Grassroots Women and Peacebuilding in

Southern Sudan’. PhD Dissertation. Department of Human Communication

Studies, University of Denver.

Ruiz, A. 2002. ‘“La India Bonita”: National Beauty in Revolutionary Mexico’, Cultural

Dynamics 14 (3): 283–301.

Shandy, D. 2007. Nuer-American Passages: Globalizing Sudanese Migration. Gaines-

ville, FL: University Press of Florida.

Siu, L. 2005. ‘Queen of the Chinese Colony: Gender, Nation, and Belonging in Diaspora’,

Anthropological Quarterly 78 (3): 511–42.

Thomas, L. M. 2006. ‘The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa’,

Journal of African History 47 (3): 461–90.

Tololyan, K. 1996. ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational

Movement’, Diaspora 5 (1): 3–36.

UNHCR. 2008. 2007 Global Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced

and Stateless Persons. Available at http://www.unhrc.org.au/pdfs/2007Global

Trends.pdf.

Werbner, P. 2005. ‘The Place Which Is Diaspora: Citizenship, Religion and Gender in

the Making of Chaordic Transnationalism’, in Levy, A. and Weingrod, A. (eds)

Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places, pp. 29–48. Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press.

Wilk, R. 1996. ‘Connections and Contradictions: From the Crooked Tree Cashew Queen

to Miss World Belize’, in Cohen, C., Wilk, R. and Stoeltje, B. (eds) Beauty Queens on

the Global Stage: Gender, Contests and Power, pp. 217–32. New York: Routledge.

Wondu, S. and Lesch, A. 2000. Battle for Peace in Sudan: An analysis of the Abuja

Conferences 1992–1993. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Wu, T. J. 1997. ‘“Loveliest Daughter of Our Ancient Cathay!”: Representations of Ethnic

and Gender Identity in the Miss Chinatown U.S.A. Beauty Pageant’, Journal of

Social History 31 (1): 5–31.

Yuval-Davis, N. 1997. Gender and Nation. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700889.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700889.html

http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article25073

http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article25073

http://www.unhrc.org.au/pdfs/2007GlobalTrends.pdf

http://www.unhrc.org.au/pdfs/2007GlobalTrends.pdf

Copyright of International Feminist Journal of Politics is the property of Routledge and its content may not be

copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written

permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Contesting Miss South Sudan: Gender and Nation Building in Diasporic Discourse

Documents

Transcript of Contesting Miss South Sudan: Gender and Nation Building in Diasporic Discourse