Full Description
Forms of group identity play a prominent role in everyday lives and politics in northeast Africa. Case studies from Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya illustrate the way that identities are formed and change over time, and how local, national, and international politics are interwoven. Specific attention is paid to the impact of modern weaponry, new technologies, religious conversion, food and land shortages, international borders, civil war, and displacement on group identities. Drawing on the expertise of anthropologists, historians and geographers, these volumes provide a significant account of a society profoundly shaped by identity politics and contribute to a better understanding of the nature of conflict and war, and forms of alliance and peacemaking, thus providing a comprehensive portrait of this troubled region.
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps, Figures and Tables
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Günther Schlee
Space and Time: Introduction to the Geography and Political History
Günther Schlee and Elizabeth E. Watson
Part I. Identification and Insecurity in the Lower Omo Valley
1. The Fate of the Suri: Conflict and Group Tension on the South-West Ethiopian Frontier
Jon Abbink
2. Resistance and Bravery: On Social Meanings of Guns in South-West Ethiopia
Ken Masuda
3. Modernization in the Lower Omo Valley and Adjacent Marches of Eastern Equatoria, Sudan: 1991-2000
Serge Tornay
Part II. Institutions of Identification and Networks of Alliance among Rift Valley Agriculturalists
4. Burji: Versatile by Tradition
Hermann Amborn
5. The Significance of the Oral Traditions of the Burji for Perceiving and Shaping their Inter-ethnic Relations
Alexander Kellner
6. Mobility, Knowledge and Power: Craftsmen in the Borderland
Hermann Amborn
Part III. Land, Identification and the State in Ethiopia
7. 'We Have Been Sold': Competing with the State and Dealing with Others
Tadesse Wolde Gossa
8. Identity, Encroachment and Ethnic Relations: the Gumuz and their Neighbours in North-Western Ethiopia
Wolde-Selassie Abbute
9. Debates over Culture in Konso since Decentralization (1991)
Elizabeth E. Watson
10. Changing Alliances of Guji-Oromo and their Neighbours: State Policies and Local Factors
Taddesse Berisso
Part IV. Pastoralists in the Kenya-Ethiopia Borderlands
11. Changing Alliances among the Boran, Garre and Gabra in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia
Günther Schlee
12. Roads to Nowhere: Nomadic Understandings of Space and Ethnicity
John C. Wood
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
