Book•
Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society
01 Jan 1974-
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined Ethiopia since the overthrow of the monarchy in the 1970s, and made a substantial contribution both to Ethiopian interpretive history and to sociological analysis.
Abstract: Greater Ethiopia combines history, anthropology, and sociology to answer two major questions. Why did Ethiopia remain independent under the onslaught of European expansionism while other African political entities were colonized? And why must Ethiopia be considered a single cultural region despite its political, religious, and linguistic diversity? Donald Levine's interdisciplinary study makes a substantial contribution both to Ethiopian interpretive history and to sociological analysis. In his new preface, Levine examines Ethiopia since the overthrow of the monarchy in the 1970s. "Ethiopian scholarship is in Professor Levine's debt...He has performed an important task with panache, urbanity, and learning."--Edward Ullendorff, Times Literary Supplement
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TL;DR: Phylogeographic identification of potential founder haplotypes revealed that approximately one-half of haplogroup L0-L5 lineages in Yemenis have close or matching counterparts in southeastern Africans, compared with a minor share in Ethiopians.
Abstract: Approximately 10 miles separate the Horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula at Bab-el-Mandeb (the Gate of Tears). Both historic and archaeological evidence indicate tight cultural connections, over millennia, between these two regions. High-resolution phylogenetic analysis of 270 Ethiopian and 115 Yemeni mitochondrial DNAs was performed in a worldwide context, to explore gene flow across the Red and Arabian Seas. Nine distinct subclades, including three newly defined ones, were found to characterize entirely the variation of Ethiopian and Yemeni L3 lineages. Both Ethiopians and Yemenis contain an almost-equal proportion of Eurasian-specific M and N and African-specific lineages and therefore cluster together in a multidimensional scaling plot between Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African populations. Phylogeographic identification of potential founder haplotypes revealed that approximately one-half of haplogroup L0–L5 lineages in Yemenis have close or matching counterparts in southeastern Africans, compared with a minor share in Ethiopians. Newly defined clade L6, the most frequent haplogroup in Yemenis, showed no close matches among 3,000 African samples. These results highlight the complexity of Ethiopian and Yemeni genetic heritage and are consistent with the introduction of maternal lineages into the South Arabian gene pool from different source populations of East Africa. A high proportion of Ethiopian lineages, significantly more abundant in the northeast of that country, trace their western Eurasian origin in haplogroup N through assorted gene flow at different times and involving different source populations.
283 citations
Cites background from "Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of ..."
...; third, during the 4th–6th centuries, when Syrian missionaries brought Christianity to Aksumites and to their descendants, the Tigrais and the Amharas; and fourth, because of the influence of Muslim Arabs, which primarily affected the southeastern parts of the country (Levine 1974)....
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...…centuries A.D.; third, during the 4th–6th centuries, when Syrian missionaries brought Christianity to Aksumites and to their descendants, the Tigrais and the Amharas; and fourth, because of the influence of Muslim Arabs, which primarily affected the southeastern parts of the country (Levine 1974)....
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TL;DR: In this article, Uzoigwe argues that the most distinctively African contribution to human history could be said to have been precisely the civilized art of living fairly peaceably together not in states.
Abstract: This survey can only be one historian's view of a large and controversial matter. African states are contested objects of study on two grounds, the one particular to the changing preoccupations of Africanists, the other common to the humanities in general. European colonialism was a living denial of the ability of Africans to organize their own sovereignties. African studies emerged out of colonialism's decay, in part a sort of recantation, in part a dimension of informal empire. The analysis of past and present African states could not fail to act as a lightning conductor of warring emotions, ideologies, and theories, categories which have often not been very distinct. The first African histories after the colonial era tended to be, as the first studies in political science were necessarily, studies in state-formation as achievement. In more recent years, it has been objected that these were really chronicles of injury, not, as was thought, of pride; for states were and are engines of oppression, not civilization (for early protests, see Soyinka, 1967; Wrigley, 1971; Chanock, 1972b; and later, Markovitz, 1977: 25-55). Moreover, most Africans did not actually live in states until colonial rule fastened Leviathan's yoke upon them. Indeed, the most distinctively African contribution to human history could be said to have been precisely the civilized art of living fairly peaceably together not in states. The dispute was really over the evolutionist assumption that it is in some sense “better” to live in states, a premise so deeply rooted in most of us that it can seem almost an insult to explore analytically “the notion of statelessness, long abandoned by historians of Africa” (Uzoigwe, 1980: 115).
187 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jul 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the history of ethnicity and power in Ethiopia, focusing on a constructivist approach to map power and ethnicity in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE).
Abstract: .................................................................................................................................. 6 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... 7 Acronyms, Glossary and notes on usage and orthography ............................................. 9 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 13 Section One: Setting the scene .......................................................................................... 27 Chapter I. 1991: Redrawing the empire state .................................................................... 27 What happened in 1991 and after ..................................................................................... 27 Competing accounts .......................................................................................................... 35 Chapter II. Frameworks, perspectives, and constraints .................................................. 40 Introducing the ‘terrain’ of ‘ethnicity’ .................................................................................. 40 Theorising ethnicity and ethno-nationalism ....................................................................... 43 Looking again at collectives... ........................................................................................... 54 Chapter III. Scope and Ambition of the Thesis ................................................................. 81 Methodological issues ....................................................................................................... 81 Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia on a constructivist approach ........................................... 94 Section Two .......................................................................................................................... 99 Legacies, resources, causes, inventions: historical roots and routes to ‘ethnic federalism’ ............................................................................................................................ 99 Chapter IV. Building and dismantling the traditions of the empire state..................... 102 Forging the nexus of ethnicity and access to power........................................................ 104 Inflaming the nexus: waking after a thousand years ....................................................... 117 The Ethiopian student movement and the ‘National Question’ ....................................... 127 Chapter V. The protagonists of ethnic mobilisation ...................................................... 146 Context: the Dergue regime............................................................................................. 146 The politicisation of ethnicity in the north, and the emergence of the EPRDF ................ 153 Ethnic organisation in the South: Oromia and the OLF................................................... 172 Relations between the OLF and TPLF/EPRDF............................................................... 178 Section Three. Mapping power and ethnicity in the Federal Democratic Republic .... 182 Chapter VI. Reworking representation: political mobilisation at the limits of ‘revolutionary democracy’ ................................................................................................ 185 ‘Un museo di popoli’: animating the exhibits ................................................................... 186 Coalitions with clan leaders: shifting strategy.................................................................. 205 Competition in Oromia ..................................................................................................... 216 Regional capitals and the ‘young turks’ ........................................................................... 222 Chapter VII. Reworking territory: languages, boundaries and budgets....................... 228 Harar and Wag Himra: where history brought privilege .................................................. 229 ‘Repacking Pandora’s box’ in the Southern Region ........................................................ 248 Conclusions........................................................................................................................ 283 Map 1: Internal Administrative Units 1913....................................................................... 297 Map 2: Provinces 1935....................................................................................................... 297 Map 3: New Internal Administrative Divisions 1935 ....................................................... 297 Map 4: Provinces of Italian East Africa 1940................................................................... 297 Map 5: Provinces and Federated Eritrea 1952 ................................................................ 297 Map 6: Internal Administrative Units 1963-1987 ............................................................. 297 Map 7: PDRE Administrative & Autonomous Units 1987-1991 ..................................... 297 Map 8: TGE Boundary Commission Map 1991-1992 ...................................................... 297 Map 9: FDRE Regions, Zones, and Special weredas, 1999 ........................................... 297 Maps 10a-e: EPRDF Administered FDRE Regions ......................................................... 297 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 298 Published books and articles ........................................................................................... 298 Unpublished sources ....................................................................................................... 316 Official Publications ......................................................................................................... 321 Publications of Ethiopian Political Organisations............................................................. 322
145 citations
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: In this article, an analysis of the implementation of a federal system within a dominant party state is presented, which includes examinations of both the legal and functional aspects of the federalisation process in Ethiopia.
Abstract: Since 1991, when the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front came to power, two parallel political processes have taken place in Ethiopia. Firstly, the country is restructuring into a federal system, where the regional governments are obtaining the right to self-government and representation at federal level. Secondly, the party in power is strengthening its control of the regions by creating satellite parties and including them within its centralised party structures. These processes have two fundamentally different aims. The federal system, formalised in the constitution, aims at enhancing regional autonomy from the central government, while the building of a centralised party system has the objective of concentrating the power in the hands of the party leadership at the top. This study is an analysis of the implementation of a federal system within a dominant party state. It includes examinations of both the legal and functional aspects of the federalisation process in Ethiopia. Theories on federalism and federations are used as guidelines in the exploration of literature, documents and own interview material on the implementation of the federal system. The analysis of the Ethiopian constitution and various proclamations has shown that the Ethiopian de jure model meets the requirements to be classified as federal. But the process of drafting and ratifying the constitution was totally dominated by the ruling party, and hence, the federal project lost legitimacy. The exploration of the functioning of the federal system disclosed that the federal division of power as defined in the constitution is severely undermined by the centralised party structures.
143 citations
Cites background from "Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of ..."
...Some explain this with the socalled Ethiopian culture, where silence and scepticism are seen as valued qualities (Levine 1974)....
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TL;DR: The transition from the lore and scholarship of colonial social anthropology to post-colonial forms of African studies has been stalled into a brittle break because its central focus on the "tribe" has been under attack.
Abstract: A remarkable feature of African studies has been the sharp discontinuities in the characterization of transitions in African history and society from one era to another. Thus, for an important example, colonialism has rarely been related to the previous era of the slave trade in the analysis of any dominant socioeconomic themes in Africa. Such discontinuity is significant in one important strand of modern African studies: The transition from the lore and scholarship of colonial social anthropology to postcolonial forms of African studies has been stalled into a brittle break because its central focus on the “tribe” has been under attack. Social anthropology gained strength through its analysis of the tribe and its associated concepts of kin groups and kinship behaviors in colonial Africa. However, following criticisms of the mission and manners of social anthropology by postindependence African scholars and politicians, and a brave reexamination of the conceptual problems of their discipline, social anthropologists more or less agreed to abandon the use of the tribe and of its more obvious derivative tribalism with respect to Africa.
129 citations
Cites background from "Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of ..."
...Foremost in this category is the remarkable case of Ethiopia, which is usually left out in any considerations of the slave trade, presumably because it did not participate (see Levine 1974:26)....
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