"Highland Farmers and the ""Modernizing"" State in Ethiopia: Conjunctures and Disjunctures"

Wolde-Medhin, Tesfaye

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Description

Title

"Highland Farmers and the ""Modernizing"" State in Ethiopia: Conjunctures and Disjunctures"

Author(s)

Wolde-Medhin, Tesfaye

Issue Date

2004

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Gottlieb, Alma

Department of Study

Anthropology

Discipline

Anthropology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

Economics, Agricultural

Language

eng

Abstract

"This study is a detailed and two-pronged look of the cultural and political relations between indigenous social institutions and practices of highland farmers in Warra Himanu, South Wallo Administrative Zone, and successive regime forms of the ""modernizing"" state in Ethiopia. With regard to farmers in Warra Himanu, the study examines the cultural and political history of the area, indigenous knowledge of the environment relating to the production of livelihood, and the various cultural values and social institutions that underlie the constitution and organization of local communities. Insofar as the ""modernizing"" state is concerned, the study describes the discourses and policy orientations of each its three main incarnations: the ""reforming"" monarchy (1900--1974), the military ""Marxist-Leninist"" regime (1974--1991), and the ""ethno-federalist"" regime (since 1991). In each case, the regime's defining ""modernizing"" discourses deployed to create public meanings about the projected direction of ""development"" or ""progress,"" the nature of its policies towards farmers, and the corresponding mode of elite politics are examined to reveal the great extent to which all of these have been driven by the changing context of global power politics and cultural flows. As a whole, the study underscores the implications of the disjunctures and conjunctures between the discourses and practices of the ""modernizing"" state and farmers' social and cultural lives both for the nature and effectivity of state power and for the strength and durability of farmers' local communities and their participations in the politics of ""modernization."""

Graduation Semester

2004

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/85263

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