Wendy James

The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia: Essays in History and Social Anthropology

Part I. The making of an imperial state: 1. Old Abyssinia and the new Ethiopian empire: themes in social history Donald Donham Part II. Renegotiating power and authority: 2. Nekemte and Addis Abeba: dilemmas of provincial rule Alessandro Triulzi 3. From ritual kings to Ethiopian landlords in Maale Donald Donham 4. Institutionalizing a fringe periphery: Dassanetch-Amhara relations Uri Almagor Part III. Reorienting kinship and identity: 5. Lifelines: exchange marriage among the Gumuz Wendy James 6. A problem of domination at the periphery: the Kwegu and the Mursi David Turton Part IV. Expanding tribute and trade: 7. Coffee in centre-periphery relations: Gedeo in the early twentieth century Charles W. McCellan 8. Vicious cycles: ivory, slaves, and arms on the new Maji frontier Peter P. Garretson 9. On the Nilotic frontier: imperial Ethiopia in the southern Sudan, 1898-1936 Douglas H. Johnson Epilogue Wendy James.

The pursuit of certainty : religious and cultural formulations

Although the world population faces movement, mixing and displacement on a larger scale than ever before, the result has not been a collapse of boundaries but an increase in the rise of new forms of ethnic, cultural and religious identity. Those based in the highly developed countries can extend global influence through wealth and sophisticated technology. The Pursuit of Certainty presents original case studies which explore the effect anthropologys inherited tradition of tolerance and cross-cultural understanding has on the new pursuits of truth. Several chapters focus on the rise of new certainties while others examine notions of diversity providing a critical perspective on the new religious movements and current popular orthodoxies relating to society and culture.

Charles Jędrej and the ‘Deep Rurals’: A West African model moves to the Sudan, Ethiopia, and beyond†

From his original fieldwork in West Africa, Jędrej moved to teach at the University of Khartoum and pursue further research in the Sudan, especially in the Ingessana Hills of the upper Blue Nile. Here he sought to explore underlying connections between the peripheral minorities of that region and their common involvement in the wider patterns of central Sudanese history. In this project he adopted, and developed, the concept of ‘deep rurals’ from the work of Murray Last. This article shows how effective his work was in helping to break down the old oppositions between ‘state’ and ‘stateless’ societies, and even ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ life. It shows how his application of the ‘deep rurals’ idea has been taken up by others, particularly archaeologists working in the culturally heterogeneous regions of western Ethiopia. The concept informs Jędrejs own later research in Scotland, and might indeed have wider relevance in todays age of hi-tech communications.

Human life as drama: A Maussian insight

Recent years have seen the beginning of new conversations between the ‘natural’ and ‘socio-cultural’ sides of the human sciences and the story of our long-term history as a species. Both sociology and the biological sciences, since the mid-twentieth century, have sought to avoid rigid models of individual or collective behaviour and to develop more flexible approaches. A concept finding favour today among very different scholars is ‘sociality’. It is well established in literary English (and French), but has only recently become a technical concept. Mauss was deeply interested in long-term history and in connections with our evolutionary past as it was then understood. He envisaged social life often as a scene in movement, a potentially creative experience of living encounters. He did not use the term ‘sociality’, but he did make frequent reference to the image of ‘drama’, explicitly and implicitly through the way he re-presented ethnographic evidence. This article argues that his insights anticipated our re-thinking of the ‘nature’ of social life today.

Evans-Pritchard, Sir Edward E (1902–73)

Edward Evans-Pritchard was a leading scholar of the twentieth century, holding the Chair in Social Anthropology at Oxford from 1946 to 70. Originally trained in history, Evans-Pritchard became famous for his outstanding ethnographic works on the Azande and Nuer peoples of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In raising classic questions about the nature of reason, political order, and religion across the gulf then imagined between ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’ societies, these studies brought a new sophistication into anthropological theory. He inspired a generation of followers whose work helped spread an international recognition for social anthropology, as an academic subject also relevant to practical affairs.

Juan Maria Schuver's Travels in North-East Africa 1880-1888

Contents: Foreword Preface Introduction Text: Book I: Between two Niles Book II: On the Abyssinian frontier Book III: Last journey South Appendices Bibliography Index.