Identity and Lifestyle Construction in Multi-Ethnic Shantytowns: A Case Study of Al-Baraka Community in Khartoum, Sudan

This book examines the construction of identity and different lifestyles of the Al-Baraka shantytown community. The concepts of lifestyle and localization process are used as basic tools of analysis to develop a theoretical model that can be applied elsewhere. The localization process reveals how Al-Baraka people adopt different kinds of behaviors, institutions and activities from various origins, and re-invent them locally to be their own. The book concludes that the social identity of Sudan today is not confined to a simplistic binary opposition (Arab vs. African), but is constituted of social identities comprised of more complex sets of practiced lifestyles.