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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Conflict and social change on the south-west Ethiopian frontier: an analysis of Suri society
Author:Abbink, JonISNI
Year:2009
Periodical:Journal of Eastern African Studies
Volume:3
Issue:1
Pages:22-41
Language:English
Geographic term:Ethiopia
Subjects:social conflicts
Suri
violence
ethnic relations
ethnicity
social change
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/17531050802682697
Abstract:The author examines changing configurations of regional conflict in southwestern Ethiopia around the Suri people, an ethnic group living on the Sudanese-Ethiopian border. He examines the question of why the Suri, a small agropastoral people at the margins of State power centres, failed to develop solutions to growing problems of group conflict, challenges of State policy, the spread of small arms (since the late 1980s), and the failure to form new local alliances with neighbouring groups. The social and cultural effects of violence are fragmenting Suri society and their regional position has been weakened, in contrast to, for instance, the Nyangatom or Anywaa, neighbouring ethnic groups of comparable size who are more successful in the ethno-federal political structure of post-1991 Ethiopia. In addition, while the Suri are affected by new globalizing influences like tourism and evangelical Christianity, there is only a very slow movement towards more inclusive identification, e.g. through religious conversion, or through the incorporation of new elements into their mode of life. The reasons for the present crisis of Suri society, which is partly one of livelihoods decline, failing identification and insecurity about the future, are explored and the conditions of interethnic instability in the region described. The role of the Ethiopian State as a political model largely incapable of accommodating difference and diversity is also discussed in assessing the 'fate' of smaller ethnic groups such as the Suri in politico-economically marginal zones with high levels of insecurity. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited]
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