Rangeland, forests and riverine landscapes of pastoral communities in Eastern Africa are increasingly under threat. Abetted by states who think that outsiders can better use the lands than the people who have lived there for centuries, outside commercial interests have displaced indigenous dwellers from pastoral territories. This volume presents case studies from Eastern Africa, based on long-term field research, that vividly illustrate the struggles and strategies of those who face dispossession and also discredit ideological false modernist tropes like ‘backwardness’ and ‘primitiveness’.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Futuremaking with Pastoralists
Echi Christina Gabbert
Part I: Setting the Context: Modernity and Citizenship in Pastoral Areas
Chapter 1. Modern Mobility in East Africa: Pastoral Responses to Rangeland Fragmentation, Enclosure and Settlement
John G. Galaty
Chapter 2. Unequal Citizenship and One-Sided Communication: Anthropological Perspectives on Collective Identification in the Context of Large-Scale Land Transfers in Ethiopia
Günther Schlee
Chapter 3. Global Trade, Local Realities: Why African States Undervalue Pastoralism
Peter D. Little
Part II: Contested Identities and Territories: A History of Expropriation
Chapter 4. Modes of Dispossession of Indigenous Lands and Territories in Africa
Elifuraha I. Laltaika and Kelly M. Askew
Chapter 5. Land and the State in Ethiopia
John Markakis
Chapter 6. Persistent Expropriation of Pastoral Lands: The Afar Case
Maknun Ashami and Jean Lydall
Part III: Power, Politics and Reactions to State-Building
Chapter 7. Anatomy of a White Elephant: Investment Failure and Land Conflicts on Ethiopia’s Oromia–Somali Frontier
Jonah Wedekind
Chapter 8. From Cattle Herding to Charcoal Burning: Land Expropriation, State Consolidation and Livelihood Changes in Abaya Valley, Southern Ethiopia
Asebe Regassa
Chapter 9. Villagization in Ethiopia’s Lowlands: Development vs. Facilitating Control and Dispossession
Fana Gebresenbet
Part IV: Underdeveloping South Omo
Chapter 10. ‘Breaking Every Rule in the Book’: The Story of River Basin Development in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley
David Turton
Chapter 11. State-Building in the Ethiopian South-Western Lowlands: Experiencing the Brunt of State Power in Mela
Lucie Buffavand
Chapter 12. Customary Land Use and Local Consent Practices in Mun (Mursi): A New Call for Meaningful FPIC Standards in Southern Ethiopia
Shauna La Tosky
Chapter 13. Ethiopia’s ‘Blue Oil’? Hydropower, Irrigation and Development in the Omo-Turkana Basin
Edward G.J. Stevenson and Benedikt Kamski
Conclusion: Pastoralists for Future
Echi Christina Gabbert, Fana Gebresenbet and Jonah Wedekind
Glossary
Index
About the author
Günther Schlee is Professor of Social Anthropology at Arba Minch University, Ethiopia, and Director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. His main publications include Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya (Manchester University Press, 1989) and How Enemies Are Made: Towards a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflict (Berghahn Books, 2008).