Abdi Kusow

More than half a century ago, Frantz Fanon made two pivotal observations about cataclysmic convulsions that would engulf Central and Eastern Africa. The first referred to his prescient observation that the African continent resembles a revolver, and Zaire is the trigger (Fanon, 1966 [2005]). His clairvoyant statement eerily prefigures what political commentators have, since the 1990s, characterized as the potential starting point of Africa's First World War (Williams, 2013). After the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire) became the site where warring armies from more than four neighboring countries came to battle one another, presumably to defend the legitimate existence of a proxy group in the country. Zimbabwean and Angolan forces were aligned with the regime of Laurent Kabila, while Rwanda and Uganda - the original patrons of Laurent Kabila and his putsch - were now his sworn enemies. Fanon's second observation warned against the ramifications and implications of a Somali-Ethiopian war whose foundation was nationalistic (Fanon, 1969). This warning came with devastating consequences. The resulting political, social, and economic landscape of Somalia compels us to examine the contours of both the centripetal and centrifugal forces that still animate social upheavals. This requires a bold reexamination of analytic categories, and the ability to envision new ones to cope with the new reality. In this essay, I confine myself to the new reality in the Horn of Africa. I will engage in a comparative analysis by telescoping a panoramic view of regional history. This new telescoping and reality must be understood, not from the vantage point of national disintegration by way of political conflict, but through the perspective that social transformation and migration work as the ultimate engine of social change (Richerson and Boyd, 2008).

Based on in-depth oral interviews carried out in Mogadishu,Somalia, and countries neighboring Somalia in 2009 and 2013,our purpose in this study is to map the nature of prejudice and hate discourse used by Somalis against the Bantu Jareer and the Yibir, Gabooye, and Tumaal communities in Somalia. The hate discourse used against the Yibir, Gabooye, and Tumal outcast communities is premised on assumptions of their supposed unholy origin and their engagement in occupations and social activities that are despised by the so-called Somali noble groups. The prejudice and hate discourse against the Bantu Jareer Somalis is derived from their African origin and alleged African-like physical characteristics in comparison with the features of other Somalis.

Although substance abuse often accompanies delinquency and other forms of antisocial behavior, there is less scholarly agreement about the timing of substance use vis-à-vis an individual's antisocial trajectory. Similarly, although there is extraordinary evidence that onset is inversely related to the severity of the criminal career, there is surprisingly little research on the offense type of onset or the type of antisocial behavior that was displayed when an individual initiated his or her offending career. Drawing on data from a sample of serious adult criminal offenders (N = 500), the current study examined 12 forms of juvenile delinquency (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft, arson, weapons, sexual offense, drug sales, and drug use) in addition to age at arrest onset, age, sex, race to explore their association with chronicity (total arrests), extreme chronicity (1 SD above the mean which was equivalent to 90 career arrests), and lambda ...

... Despite the original in-tention of the Sufi leaders to replace danism with Islam, prior cultural af-filiations superseded Islam.29 Therefore Islam in Somalia, albeit a poten-tial force for Somali unity, was overrun by its powerful contender, "danism." IM ... 40 Abdi Mohamed Kusow ...

This dissertation represents a study of migration processes of Somalis to Canada, and as such, it seeks to contribute to knowledge about the adjustment processes of relocation. The theoretical concepts within which the discussion of this dissertation is based are mainly derived from symbolic interactions. Thirty in-depth interviews from Somali immigrants and refugees in Toronto, Canada constituted the primary data. The data from the Somali immigrants from Toronto indicate that the process of migration intrinsically involves identity challenges and transformations. This process further raises questions about the nature of identity challenges and race relations that these individuals encounter once they arrive in Canada. Descriptive analysis of this process led to two main conclusions. The first conclusion pertains to the assertion that the process of migration must be seen as a social process above and beyond the physical movement. This social process of migration brings forth a contact between two hitherto unfamiliar groups to each other. The data pertaining to this question points out that Somalis do not employ radicalized identity categories, and thus racialized or ethnicized identity categories do not provide meaningful categories of social understanding. The second conclusion pertains to the nature of race relations that may result from such an encounter. In light of the above formulation, this dissertation asserts that the idea of race relation, at least, as it pertains to that between Somali immigrants and the Canadian majority group, raises the question who stigmatizes whom? ^