The relation of pastoral societies with the 'outside world' has proved to be one of structural deterioration. This poses questions as to the political space remaining for these societies within... Show moreThe relation of pastoral societies with the 'outside world' has proved to be one of structural deterioration. This poses questions as to the political space remaining for these societies within the State arenas to which they nominally belong and the nature of their ethnoreligious identities. The pastoral societies of East Africa, while varied in nature and social organization, still show some common characteristics with regard to religion and political system. The author argues that the principles of clan segmentation, age-group structure, the ritual-cyclical ordering of community life, and decentralized, regionally exercised power will remain more important organizing elements for pastoral societies than purely ideological-religious factors. This is a result of certain macroconditions such as their necessary confinement to marginal areas, their geographical mobility, and their lack of integration into the wider State society in terms of literacy, economic surplus extraction, social mobility, or political representation. The author looks at the 'strategies' of various agropastoral groups in terms of religious response and political action within these macroconditions. He uses the examples of the Boran in Ethiopia and Kenya, the Nuer in Sudan and Ethiopia, and the Surma of southern Ethiopia. Show less
According to the policy of the government of the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), ethnic identity is the ideological basis of Ethiopia's political organization and... Show moreAccording to the policy of the government of the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), ethnic identity is the ideological basis of Ethiopia's political organization and administration and as such has been enshrined in the Federal Constitution of December 1994. Yet the Constitution's explicit reinstatement of ethnicity in law coincides with a politico-economic situation which has made ethnoregional groups more interdependent than ever before, and where the central State has come to play an essential role as a resource and a mechanism of redistribution. The author looks at the way in which ethnicity is translated in the clauses on nationality rights, noting the originality of the Constitution, on the one hand, and the difficulties and ambiguities surrounding the structures of implementation of the ethnicization formula, on the other. The impression arises that "self-determination" has been granted for rhetorical and ideological purposes, and that the central federal government has no intention of relinquishing real power. There is, furthermore, no possibility of judicial review by the courts of State executive and legislative powers. Nor has the Constitution solved the problem of reconciling the various generations of rights. Moreover, the failure to define or design the Ethiopian polity as an arena of compromise or issue politics creates problems for the realization of a country-wide democratic polity. Notes, ref., sum. (p. i) Show less
