Among
the Pastoral Afar in Ethiopia: Tradition, Continuity and Socio-Economic Change
Kassa
Negussie Getachew
Among the Pastoral Afar in Ethiopia: Tradition, Continuity and Socio-Economic
Change
OSSREA, Addis Ababa. 2001. 208p.
The
subject of this work are the Afar pastoralist communities of the Middle Awash,
rather than the Aussa agro-pastoralists of the Lower Awash, an Afar “centre”
with centuries of history of organised Sultanates. The fieldwork for this study
was carried out in Ethiopia over a period of eighteen months during 1994-2995.
The site of the work was the Amibara district of the Middle Awash, among the Debine
and Weima sections of the Adohimarra Afar. The findings are
presented in seven chapters. The first three describe the Afar ethnography,
history, traditional economy and social organization, including the prescriptive
patrilateral cross-cousin marriage (absuma). Chapters four to six
demonstrate the challenges and impact of development, i. e., expansion of
farming, sedentarisation, market integration, etc. The study concludes with a
general summary and conclusion in chapter 6. The study challenges a range of
stereotypes about pastoralists’ social life, pastoral economy, resource use
and tenure, livestock raising, and ecology in the semi-arid lands in
northeastern Africa.