Planning Amidst Precarity: Utopian Imaginings in South Sudan

In spite of their present difficulties, brought again to the world's attention by the December 2013 political crisis and ensuing violence, many South Sudanese have imagined alternative visions of the future. Utopian imaginings, made manifest through urban plans and business proposals, offer South Sudanese citizens ways to think outside the present, break with the past, and enact solutions when faced with extremely precarious situations. For scholars studying the political dynamics of South Sudan's transition to statehood, the aspirations revealed in these plans suggest that constructive outcomes were being actively pursued and planned for by some of the same actors involved in conflict. These visions and the activities surrounding them, therefore, have important ramifications for everyday reality in contemporary Africa. They must be incorporated into analyses to attain a fuller, more nuanced, understanding of the potential future of the new nation-state.