Paper short abstract:

Between 2018 and 2021, Sudan’s weak, oppressive state faced surging neighbourhood autonomy amid a struggle for democracy. This paper explores how the Neighbourhood Resistance Committees redefined sovereignty and legitimacy in Khartoum through grassroots mobilisation and socio-political innovation.

Paper long abstract:

Between the start of the Sudanese Revolution in 2018, and the coup of October 2021, neighbourhood autonomy rose as a common theme, characterising the revolution as a territorial-material struggle for democracy, political change and social reform. During this period, the Sudanese state was characterised by a series of political turbulences that highlighted its weakness and oppression. Simultaneously, the resistance scene has engaged in a magnitude of processes to navigate these crises such as grassroots mobilisation, community development, alongside a constant exercise of democracy and political dissent. The Neighbourhood Resistance Committees (NRCs) rose as a prominent non-state and grassroots actor, representing a general desire for collective autonomy and self-organisation.

In this paper, we explore neighbourhood autonomy as the canvas to how NRCs were able to negotiate political futures, redefine sovereignty, gain legitimacy, and reclaim state resources. In the context of hybrid governance, the NRCs place-based approach highlights how non-state actors can hold legitimate authority alongside a weakened state, while fostering innovative forms of civic engagement and service provision. This reframes the NRCs’ activities, from mere evidence of state failure, into a generative model of collaboration, where decentralised grassroots structures and formal institutions coexist. Through exploring the NRCs’ journeys during the revolution and transitional period, we showcase how they utilised neighbourhoods as dual sites for resisting the state and replenishing the community during times of crisis. To achieve this, we adopt an interpretivist, phenomenological position on how the experiences of resistance in the social world, particularly in Khartoum, are produced and lived.