... Unknown to most of its members, some of the leading figures in the Patriotic Society, includi... more ... Unknown to most of its members, some of the leading figures in the Patriotic Society, includingGebremeskel Woldu – its Secretary General – had ... came from an influential family in the Akele Guzai region of the highlands: Rasi Tessema Asberom, his son Abraha Tessema and ...
One of the alarming features of the intersection of the world economic crisis with the global foo... more One of the alarming features of the intersection of the world economic crisis with the global food and energy crises has been the tidal wave of large-scale land acquisitions it has unleashed. By enclosing the village commons and extinguishing the customary rights of smallholders, these land grabs are accelerating trends toward large-scale industrial farming and tenure rearrangements favoring international agribusiness. This article situates these developments in the social space of Ethiopia and a specific historical context of transformations in state and property relations. By critically analyzing the designation of the commons as empty or underutilized spaces awaiting redemptive development, it highlights the ways in which the legitimizing claims of terra nullius efface the complex ecologies and distinctive spatial dynamics of social reproduction in the zones designated for enclosures.
A global land rush is aggressively underway. It is reinventing frontier narratives wherever farml... more A global land rush is aggressively underway. It is reinventing frontier narratives wherever farmland, rangeland, and forestland appear “underutilized,” particularly in the Global South. Though the means and motives of these acquisitions are diverse, the lens of “new enclosures” lends itself to focusing on their similarities. New enclosures surpass the enclosures of bygone centuries in scale and speed and in the plethora of resources they reach. Sociological interventions, both theoretical and applied, are needed to contextualize and concretize this burgeoning alienation of land rights and power contingencies across communities and continents.
This essay examines the momentous transformations in the agrarian social order of contemporary Et... more This essay examines the momentous transformations in the agrarian social order of contemporary Ethiopia. It argues that the contemporary world economic, food, and energy crisis is accelerating processes of commercialization and enclosures that are profoundly altering the social and physical landscape of smallholder farming. These dynamics have taken a spatially divergent pattern that maps onto older imperial socio-spatial and cultural hierarchies. In the historically core regions and their socio-cultural extensions, a vigorous process of smallholder commercialization is being promoted, while in the surrounding lowland peripheries an extensive process of enclosures is creating an archipelago of large-scale mechanized farming that is displacing the subsistence sector. The contrasting forms of displacement and dispossession generated by these processes, and the patterns of social-property relations they are engendering, can be understood as outcomes of the uneven and combined dynamics of state formation and the differentiated incorporation of the regional peasantries into the dominant social orders constitutive of twentieth century Ethiopia.
: Some sixty-five years ago, in the immediate postwar period, Eritrea was one of the first coloni... more : Some sixty-five years ago, in the immediate postwar period, Eritrea was one of the first colonies in Africa to grapple with the issue of decolonization. A self-conscious national movement first emerged in the towns from among the middle strata of teachers, clerks, translators, artisans, and merchants, who were situated in an ambivalent relationship to the colonial state. Its articulation
... Diplomacy could become normalized, but the instrument of diplomacy was to a large extent ... ... more ... Diplomacy could become normalized, but the instrument of diplomacy was to a large extent ... century Age of Revolution, in which questions of empire and citizenship, slavery and racial ... Given the heterogeneous social character of the empire, there was no structural congruence ...
This paper provides a preliminary survey of the culture and history of the island of Massawa loca... more This paper provides a preliminary survey of the culture and history of the island of Massawa located on the African shore of the Red Sea. Its point of departure is an examination of the vast transoceanic commercial circuits of which it was a part. These circuits, whose extent and depth varied over time, represented dense flows of people, goods, and ideas in multiple directions, and contributed to the extraordinary pluralism of the linked societies. The sea was the primary medium of this commercial and cultural interchange and Massawa was the fulcrum of its diffusion into the Northeast African interior. Following these lines of seaborne trade, Northeast Africa can be understood as part of a trans-regional circuit embracing parts of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean worlds.
The aim of this article is to examine the interactive dynamics of "Africa" and the &quo... more The aim of this article is to examine the interactive dynamics of "Africa" and the "world economy" over the past half century. By relating the overarching developmental trajectory of the continent to the long-wave rhythms of the world economy, the article identifies three relatively articulated periods in the political economy of postcolonial Africa. The first, from circa 1960 to the late 1970s, was a period of state-led developmentalism enabled by the long postwar boom in the world economy and the embedded liberalism of the Bretton Woods system. A second period from circa 1980 to the turn of the new century was conditioned by the long downturn in the world-economy and a neo-li beral regime of accumulation that sought to re-structure and re-integrate Africa into a deregulated world market. The turn of the new millennium constitutes a new period in which neither the deep structural springs of the long downturn nor the neo-liberal project as such have been overcome...
D_International Perspectives on Education and Society
Recent worldwide gains in girls’ schooling are raising new questions about the continued relevanc... more Recent worldwide gains in girls’ schooling are raising new questions about the continued relevance of gender for educational inequality. At issue is whether the time has come to shift the policy focus away from gender to socioeconomic status. Answers to this question, we suggest, depend on how gender gaps close, i.e., do they close irreversibly, evenly, and faster than socio-economic (SES)-related inequality?Against this background and building on contrasted sociological perspectives on inequality, our chapter examines the recent convergence trajectories of several sub-Saharan countries, asking if these trajectories warrant a policy shift away from gender.Our findings are mixed. Although, the magnitude of sex-related inequality in schooling is consistently smaller than SES-related inequality, the process of gender convergence remains reversible and it unfolds in top-down fashion. Such findings warrant continued attention to gender in sub-Saharan Africa, but with particular focus on ...
... Unknown to most of its members, some of the leading figures in the Patriotic Society, includi... more ... Unknown to most of its members, some of the leading figures in the Patriotic Society, includingGebremeskel Woldu – its Secretary General – had ... came from an influential family in the Akele Guzai region of the highlands: Rasi Tessema Asberom, his son Abraha Tessema and ...
One of the alarming features of the intersection of the world economic crisis with the global foo... more One of the alarming features of the intersection of the world economic crisis with the global food and energy crises has been the tidal wave of large-scale land acquisitions it has unleashed. By enclosing the village commons and extinguishing the customary rights of smallholders, these land grabs are accelerating trends toward large-scale industrial farming and tenure rearrangements favoring international agribusiness. This article situates these developments in the social space of Ethiopia and a specific historical context of transformations in state and property relations. By critically analyzing the designation of the commons as empty or underutilized spaces awaiting redemptive development, it highlights the ways in which the legitimizing claims of terra nullius efface the complex ecologies and distinctive spatial dynamics of social reproduction in the zones designated for enclosures.
A global land rush is aggressively underway. It is reinventing frontier narratives wherever farml... more A global land rush is aggressively underway. It is reinventing frontier narratives wherever farmland, rangeland, and forestland appear “underutilized,” particularly in the Global South. Though the means and motives of these acquisitions are diverse, the lens of “new enclosures” lends itself to focusing on their similarities. New enclosures surpass the enclosures of bygone centuries in scale and speed and in the plethora of resources they reach. Sociological interventions, both theoretical and applied, are needed to contextualize and concretize this burgeoning alienation of land rights and power contingencies across communities and continents.
This essay examines the momentous transformations in the agrarian social order of contemporary Et... more This essay examines the momentous transformations in the agrarian social order of contemporary Ethiopia. It argues that the contemporary world economic, food, and energy crisis is accelerating processes of commercialization and enclosures that are profoundly altering the social and physical landscape of smallholder farming. These dynamics have taken a spatially divergent pattern that maps onto older imperial socio-spatial and cultural hierarchies. In the historically core regions and their socio-cultural extensions, a vigorous process of smallholder commercialization is being promoted, while in the surrounding lowland peripheries an extensive process of enclosures is creating an archipelago of large-scale mechanized farming that is displacing the subsistence sector. The contrasting forms of displacement and dispossession generated by these processes, and the patterns of social-property relations they are engendering, can be understood as outcomes of the uneven and combined dynamics of state formation and the differentiated incorporation of the regional peasantries into the dominant social orders constitutive of twentieth century Ethiopia.
: Some sixty-five years ago, in the immediate postwar period, Eritrea was one of the first coloni... more : Some sixty-five years ago, in the immediate postwar period, Eritrea was one of the first colonies in Africa to grapple with the issue of decolonization. A self-conscious national movement first emerged in the towns from among the middle strata of teachers, clerks, translators, artisans, and merchants, who were situated in an ambivalent relationship to the colonial state. Its articulation
... Diplomacy could become normalized, but the instrument of diplomacy was to a large extent ... ... more ... Diplomacy could become normalized, but the instrument of diplomacy was to a large extent ... century Age of Revolution, in which questions of empire and citizenship, slavery and racial ... Given the heterogeneous social character of the empire, there was no structural congruence ...
This paper provides a preliminary survey of the culture and history of the island of Massawa loca... more This paper provides a preliminary survey of the culture and history of the island of Massawa located on the African shore of the Red Sea. Its point of departure is an examination of the vast transoceanic commercial circuits of which it was a part. These circuits, whose extent and depth varied over time, represented dense flows of people, goods, and ideas in multiple directions, and contributed to the extraordinary pluralism of the linked societies. The sea was the primary medium of this commercial and cultural interchange and Massawa was the fulcrum of its diffusion into the Northeast African interior. Following these lines of seaborne trade, Northeast Africa can be understood as part of a trans-regional circuit embracing parts of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean worlds.
The aim of this article is to examine the interactive dynamics of "Africa" and the &quo... more The aim of this article is to examine the interactive dynamics of "Africa" and the "world economy" over the past half century. By relating the overarching developmental trajectory of the continent to the long-wave rhythms of the world economy, the article identifies three relatively articulated periods in the political economy of postcolonial Africa. The first, from circa 1960 to the late 1970s, was a period of state-led developmentalism enabled by the long postwar boom in the world economy and the embedded liberalism of the Bretton Woods system. A second period from circa 1980 to the turn of the new century was conditioned by the long downturn in the world-economy and a neo-li beral regime of accumulation that sought to re-structure and re-integrate Africa into a deregulated world market. The turn of the new millennium constitutes a new period in which neither the deep structural springs of the long downturn nor the neo-liberal project as such have been overcome...
D_International Perspectives on Education and Society
Recent worldwide gains in girls’ schooling are raising new questions about the continued relevanc... more Recent worldwide gains in girls’ schooling are raising new questions about the continued relevance of gender for educational inequality. At issue is whether the time has come to shift the policy focus away from gender to socioeconomic status. Answers to this question, we suggest, depend on how gender gaps close, i.e., do they close irreversibly, evenly, and faster than socio-economic (SES)-related inequality?Against this background and building on contrasted sociological perspectives on inequality, our chapter examines the recent convergence trajectories of several sub-Saharan countries, asking if these trajectories warrant a policy shift away from gender.Our findings are mixed. Although, the magnitude of sex-related inequality in schooling is consistently smaller than SES-related inequality, the process of gender convergence remains reversible and it unfolds in top-down fashion. Such findings warrant continued attention to gender in sub-Saharan Africa, but with particular focus on ...
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