The autoethnography of violence by the Sudan Police Forces in the Darfur Region, 1980- 2000: A Quest for a peace-oriented policing paradigm
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Date
2021-12-16
Authors
Boli, Richard
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Abstract
This study analyzes several facets of the Sudanese police forces using a transformative change approach from Peace and Conflict Studies, namely storytelling as peacebuilding (autoethnography). While I have conducted this study to raise awareness about widespread violence in Darfur, Sudan, it is critical to assess how storytelling affects social identity and structural violence and whether such autoethnographic accounts could help achieve new horizons for desired realities. The thesis discusses my experiences as a senior police officer in the Sudanese police force. It then analyzes some of my narratives, which cover critical themes concerning the social reorientation of theology and its impact on police institutions. It also establishes three analytical categories: (1) distribution of power, (2) social stratification, and (3) effectuating violence. Throughout the thesis, I examined how an Islamic theological orientation in the Sudanese police institution fostered contested images of policing and squandered an opportunity to promote peace in Sudan. It considers the relationship between peace-oriented community policing and police identity, arguing that community policing will resolve the role of theology in the Islamization of police forces in Sudan. The findings of this study, based on structural violence, demonstrate a shift in police agency and police identity that corresponds to the struggle for nation-building. This shift in police identity is inextricably linked to the level of violence, group classification, and membership in two Sudanese social structures: Sheikh and Indigenous.
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Keywords
Police forces, autoethnography, structural violence, Islamic theology