Dereje Feyissa

The cultural construction of State borders: the view from Gambella

Abstract The study of state borders has long been preoccupied with their artificiality and the negative impact they have had on the local people. Recent studies have shifted the focus on state borders away from constraints to state borders as conduits and opportunities. Different factors are involved in determining the conditions of resourcing state borders and borderlands. The paper argues that local perceptions – the range of cultural meanings attributed to state borders – significantly factor in how a particular international border is used by specific groups of people. Drawing on the ethnography from the Gambella region of western Ethiopia, the paper advocates for a cognitive psychological approach in border studies. In so doing it goes beyond the conventional dichotomous template between the “bounded” European and the “permeable” African border imageries. Here the binary opposites are not Europeans and Africans but rather two African neighbors – the Anywaa and the Nuer – with sharply contrasting concepts of borders. Kew is the Anywaa concept of border which they also use to refer to the International border. Its use should be restricted to the Anywaa only but conceptually it is similar to the European notion of a bounded boundary. The Anywaa subscribe to a compartmentalized view of political boundaries both at the inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic level and thus they project onto the state border the same imagery. The Nuer, on the other hand, subscribe to a more flexible view of a political community. A tribal boundary (Cieng) is permeable. Individual Nuer change identity as situations demand, this often being dictated by their search for “greener pasture”. The Nuer do exactly the same in national identification with a dynamic pattern of border-crossing depending on the fluctuating opportunity structures between the Ethiopian and Sudanese states. The Anywaas call for the rigidification of the international border and the chronic border crossing of the Nuer seemingly has strategic dimensions. A closer examination of their behavior, however, reveals that in making use of the state border both the Anywaa and the Nuer draw on their respective cultural schemata.

The transnational politics of the Ethiopian Muslim diaspora

Abstract Long distance nationalism is the dominant perspective in transnational studies. It depicts the diaspora primarily as ‘conflict-makers’ bent on advancing radical view points on homeland socio-political conflicts because of the unique decoupling of action from its consequences. Recent works have shifted the focus away from this negative image and have shown, through in-depth case studies, the constructive dimension of the transnational engagement of the diaspora. Two of these are the crucial role remittance plays in the development process in the country of origin and the peace building role of the diaspora in conflict and post conflict settings. The paper seeks to contribute to the diaspora-peace building literature through a case study of the Ethiopian Muslim diaspora in Europe and North America.

Centering Borders and Borderlands: The Evidence from Africa

Borders in Africa have generally been conceived as barriers, but they also provide what Nugent and Asiwaju (1996) call “conduits and opportunities”. The academic discourse on state borders in the continent is largely focused on the constraints side. The main topics of the literature on African borders and borderlands are conflicts over borders, marginalization of the people living along the borders, informal cross-border economies such as smuggling and the disregard of the local population for the “artificial” and often ill-administered borders.1 A second body of (not necessarily Africa-related) literature perceives borders as limiting economic and other exchanges, or, to the contrary, argues that borders are frequently irrelevant when looking at transnational and global processes of exchange and identity formation.2 Studies of transnationalism and globalization emphasize the diminishing importance of territoriality and, consequently, posit the detachment of culture, politics and economy from any fixed borders.3 Borders and borderlands feature, if at all, as zones of displacement and deterritorialization.4 Achille Mbembe5 drew attention to recent dynamics in contemporary Africa related to conflicts within and between states and/or the exploitation of natural resources such as oil and diamonds through external actors, which transcend the focus on the state as clear-cut unit, defined by its borders.

From Identification to Framing and Alignment: A New Approach to the Comparative Analysis of Collective Identities

We present a comprehensive framework for the comparative analysis of collective identities and corresponding processes of identification, framing, and alignment. Collective identities are defined as activated categories of likeness, distinction, and solidarity, located within any one of a number of possible frames (e.g., nationality, religion, and gender) and aligned series (e.g., national, regional, or local categories of identification). Emphasis falls on the dynamics of identification, framing, and alignment within limits that are cognitive or semantic, on one hand, and social, economic, political, or legal, on the other. Specifying the limits within which identification, framing, and alignment may vary allows us to elide sterile debates about whether collective identities are invariable or variable and to focus instead on variation in the relative frequency, typical duration, and degree of ease or difficulty of acts of identification corresponding to distinguishable types. Such dynamics are examined with reference to codeterminants of identification: situations, circumstances, and actors’ motives. In conclusion, we reflect on the qualitative and quantitative consequences of variable forms of identification in collective action. Multiple examples illustrate the utility of the framework for comparative analysis.

Alternative citizenship : the Nuer between Ethiopia and the Sudan

This chapter provides historical and ethnographic data that show how peoples of the borderlands actively make use of national borders. Contrary to the dominant state-centric literature that perceives state borders as a constraint to the people inhabiting the border areas, the chapter highlights local agency of the Nuer people living on both sides of the Ethiopian–South Sudan border. The chapter argues that to the Nuer the border is not a constraint but a resource with which they renegotiated their marginality on both sides of the border.

Muslims Struggling for Recognition in Contemporary Ethiopia

According to the 2007 census, Muslims constitute around 34 percent of Ethiopia’s 74 million people, making them the second largest religious group in Ethiopia after the country’s dominant religious group, Orthodox Christians (43 percent). Islam in Ethiopia had an auspicious beginning, thanks to the hospitality the companions of the Prophet Muhammad got from a benevolent Christian king in the seventh century A.D. during their migration to Axum, also referred to as the first hijra. The geographical proximity of Ethiopia to Arabia and the flourishing long-distance trade between the two as well as the disavowal of trade as a dignified vocation by the Christians had also provided a commercial inlet for Islam to Ethiopia’s hinterland. As early as the ninth century, an Islamic Sultanate was established in central Ethiopia—the Makzumite dynasty—followed by the wide variety of other Islamic principalities in the medieval period in present-day south-eastern Ethiopia (Taddesse Tamrat 1972; Trimingham 1952).