Seven Interviews with Dinka ChiefsDinka Cosmology by Francis Mading DengReview by: John W. BurtonAfrica Today, Vol. 28, No. 2, The Sudan: 25 Years of Independence (2nd Qtr., 1981), p. 126Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4186011 .

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view the north/south conflict in the Sudan. In addition, after reading Dr. Deng's book, one is basically left puzzled as to whether one should concur with Deng's optimism, or with the rather skeptical tone of the Dinka chiefs as to the future of the north/south relations in the Sudan. We may find hope in the fact that positive change has taken place between the north and the south since the 1972 peace settlement. We also need to be aware, however, that the past has not been forgotten by the south and its distrust for the north still lingers. An unexpected death of President Nimeri or the now faltering Sudanese economy may well spark off another bloody conflict between the north and south.

The situation is still explosive and not unlike what we witness now in Northern Ireland and Lebanon.

Seven Interviews with Dinka Chiefs

John W. Burton

Francis Mading Deng, DINKA COSMOLOGY (London: Ithaca Press, 1980) 348 pp., ? 18.50.

Dinka Cosmology is Francis Mading Deng's seventh monograph on aspects of Dinka society and culture. By any measure, this is a remarkable achieve- ment, and since this has been accomplished without the ambience and relative comfort of an academic appointment, this is all the more notable.

The present volume is best seen as a detailed appendix to his last volume, Africans of Two Worlds: The Dinka in Afro-Arab Sudan (1978 Yale University Press). Each of the 13 chapters of Dinka Cosmology is a verbatim transcript of interviews with various chiefs, which provided the substantive arguments of Africans of Two Worlds. Hence the present volume is more a primary source book rather than a contribution to any specific body of academic knowledge. In light of this it is unfortunate that the book was published without an index. The only guide to its contents is provided by the chapter headings which, in princi- ple, abstract the essential message of each chief. Whereas the title of the momograph suggests it is an addition to the classic books by Lienhardt and Evans-Pritchard on Dinka and Nuer religion, respectively, Deng employs the term cosmology with far less precision. Here, cosmology includes Dinka attitudes toward the President of the Sudan, a clearly Christian inspired view of creation as well as reasons for taking to the forest during the civil war.

Possibly because of its atypical format and contents, Dinka Cosmology will

enjoy a wide reading outside the field of anthropology and Nilotic Studies.

John W. Burton, of Whaton Colege (Mass.) is more fully identified on page 54.

126 AFRICATODAY

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