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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Ethiopia’s Post-Socialist Regress: The Re-imposition of Double Marginalization in Northeastern Ethiopia

presenters

    Gemechu Abeshu

    Nationality: Canada

    Residence: Canada

    Presence:Online

This article discusses the changes and continuities in post-socialist Ethiopia by taking the social organization of the pastoralist Afar people in Northeastern Ethiopia. The Afar is a segmentary society organized into clans, lineages, and families of common descent or integration. In my fieldwork area, Dobi, located on the border between Ethiopia and Djibouti, lives the Lubakubo ke Modaitio clan (where ke means ‘and’), wherein the Modaito (demographic minority) are the clan overlords over the Lubakubo (demographic majority), a superimposition introduced during the first quarter of 19th C. This quasi-feudal hierarchical system was banned during the socialist regime that ruled Ethiopia between 1974 and 1991 and replaced it with Peasant Associations where all Afar in Dobi were equally represented in the administration of their local affairs. The post-1991, post-socialist Ethiopian state, while maintaining the state ownership of land that it inherited from the socialist regime, however, restored the pre-1974 social organization wherein the Modaito clan became the overlords over the Lubakubo clan, in a region that is ruled by Aydahiso clan Dynasty (of the Aussa Sultanate), and in effect placing the Lubakubo under double marginalization. Fieldwork for this paper was conducted between 2015 and 2018 through an extended ethnography.

Keywords:

Afar; Ethiopia; Post-socialist state; Pastoralist; Double Marginalisation