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Ethnic Conflict in the ‘Tribal Zone’: the Dizi and Suri in Southern Ethiopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Jon Abbink
Affiliation:
Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Extract

The number of ethno-regional conflicts in the world has grown in intensity during the last few decades as a result of political and economic crises, and one of the unsolved paradoxes of this world-wide trend is that there seems to be a basic contradiction between the two core concepts of ‘democratisation’ and ‘ethnic self-determination’.

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Cf.Ferguson, R. Brian and Whitehead, Neil L. (eds.), War in the Tribal Zone: expanding states and indigenous warfare (Santa Fe, 1992).Google Scholar

2 Donham, Donald L. and James, Wendy (eds.), The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia: essays in history and social anthropology (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar

3 Creveld, Martin van, On Future War (London, 1991).Google Scholar

4 Ferguson and Whitehead (eds.), op. cit.

5 See Haberland, Eike, ‘Caste and Hierarchy among the Dizi (Southwest Ethiopia)’, in Rubenson, Sven (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Lund 1982 (Addis Ababa, Uppsala, and East Lansing, 1984), pp. 447–50,Google Scholar and Hierarchie und Kaste. Zur Geschichte und politischen Struktur der Dizi, Südwest Äthiopien (Stuttgart, 1993).Google ScholarCf.Deguchi, A., ‘Is Dizi a Hierarchical Society? Chieftainship and Social Structure on the Sai Mountain’, in Journal of Swahili and African Studies (Kyoto), 3, 1992, pp. 79102.Google Scholar

6 Cf.Haberland, Eike, ‘An Amharic Manuscript on the Mythical History of the Adi Kyaz (Dizi, South-West Ethiopia)’, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (London), 46, 2, 1983, pp. 240–1.Google Scholar

7 See Abbink, Jon, ‘Tribal Formation on the Ethiopian Fringe: toward a history of the “Tishana”’, in Northeast African Studies (East Lansing), 12, 1, 1990, pp. 2142,Google Scholar and ‘Famine, Guns and Gold: the Suri of Southwestern Ethiopia, 1985–91’, in Disasters (Farnham, Surrey), 17, 3, 1993, pp. 218–26.Google Scholar

8 Haberland, , ‘An Amharic Manuscript on the Mythical History of the Adi Kyaz’, p. 253.Google Scholar

9 See Haberland, Eike, ‘Die materielle Kultur der Dizi (Südwest Äthiopien) und ihr Kulturhistorischer Kontext’, in Paideuma (Stuttgart), 27, 19, pp. 121–72.Google Scholar

10 Todd, David, ‘War and Peace Between the Bodi and Dime of Southwestern Ethiopia’, in Turton, David and Fukui, Katsuyoshi (eds.), Warfare among East African Herders (Osaka, National Museum of Ethnology, 1979), pp. 211–26.Google Scholar

11 The Suri were the victims of a major drought and famine during 1984–1985 which took the lives of many hundreds. In addition, they were harrassed and sometimes shot by the Nyangatom, who stole their cattle.

12 See Peter Garretson, ‘Vicious Cycles: ivory, slaves and arms on the new Maji frontier’, in Donham and James (eds.), op. cit. pp. 196–218.

13 Cf.Bayart, Jean-François, L'État en Afrique: la politique du ventre (Paris, 1989),Google Scholar published in English as The State in Africa: the Politics of the belly (London and New York, 1993).Google Scholar

14 The worsening situation in the Maji region has been reported to a member of the House of Representatives in Addis Ababa, and publicising the plight of the Dizi in this short article is also done at the request of their increasingly desperate chiefs.