Dave Eggers -- What is the What.

This book is bald exposition of events from the horror that is Southern Sudan. A couple of comments from me.
1. Studies (see for example Basuchoudhary and Shughart, 2007 -- some shameless self promotion!) suggest that ethnic conflict is largely driven by the lack of economic institutions as opposed to political institutions. If that is true then the ethnic conflict in the Sudan can be avoided with a tailored institutional mixture of property right enforcement and contract enforcement.
But institutions are civilizational solutions to natural problems (see e.g. North, 2005) and as such need to change as these problems change. Thus the age old economic institutions that protected property rights and contracts that allowed the Arabs and the Dinka to coexist in relative harmony came under pressure as nature changed (climate changed). In the absence of a peaceful institutional generating mechanism the inter regnum between institutional paradigms is marred by conflict -- as predicted by Basuchoudhary and Shughart (2007). THe interesting question is are there specific political processes that can manage this change? -- For examlpe would proportional representation be a better institution of managing change than majority rules in multi-ethnic societies? The answer may have profound implications for national and global governance in the face of climate change.

Ref:
Basuchoudhary, A. and William F. Shughart II. 2007. "On Ethnic Conflict and the Origins of Terror." Unpublished Manuscript.
North, Douglas. 2005. Understanding the Process of Economic Change. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

2. The events in the book are horrific. What is our role? Is it ethical to say that my intellectual endeavours are designed to understand and therefore lessen human suffering? Or is that just an excuse to keep my life comfortable? Clearly everybody cant give up on family and the immediacy of life to get directly involved in causes -- but should'nt there be a bare minimum? Should I act as the priest and maintain my purity, or the levite and maintain my attachment? Is it not my respononsibility to be the Samaritan?