Author: James McCann Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 1512804401 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
In From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia, James McCann engages an interdisciplinary perspective to uncover the historical background to the persistence of famine in the northeast region of Ethiopia. His study focuses on the northern Wallo region, an area that was incorporated into Haile Selassie's modern state system and now one of the most devastated portions of the country. The history of northern Wallo and its position within the modern Ethiopian state is presented through an examination of the circumstances in which its rural population lived, farmed, and adapted to a changing physical environment and political economy between 1900 and 1935. This period also coincided with the most critical years of colonial Africa's incorporation into the world economy. McCann's employment of new field data calls into question previous studies of Africa, which have frequently identified ecological stress and famine as simply the products of capitalist development. What accounts for rural Ethiopia's vulnerability to famine, when it boasts one of Africa's most efficient traditional agricultural systems? To what extent have northern Ethiopian patterns of property, marriage, and ideology resisted or contributed to the overall impoverishment of the rural economy? The answers to these questions are found in McCann's careful examination of the historical, geographic, ecological, and demographic characteristics that have affected northern Wallo's systems of production. This comprehensive description of northern Wallo's historical experience is also instructive in terms of the nature of social change and continuity, and the persistence of famine throughout northern Ethiopia. From Poverty to Famine in Northeastern Ethiopia
Author: James McCann Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press ISBN: 9780299146108 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
For more than two thousand years, Ethiopia’s ox-plow agricultural system was the most efficient and innovative in Africa, but has been afflicted in the recent past by a series of crises: famine, declining productivity, and losses in biodiversity. James C. McCann analyzes the last two hundred years of agricultural history in Ethiopia to determine whether the ox-plow agricultural system has adapted to population growth, new crops, and the challenges of a modern political economy based in urban centers. This agricultural history is set in the context of the larger environmental and landscape history of Ethiopia, showing how farmers have integrated crops, tools, and labor with natural cycles of rainfall and soil fertility, as well as with the social vagaries of changing political systems. McCann traces characteristic features of Ethiopian farming, such as the single-tine scratch plow, which has retained a remarkably consistent design over two millennia, and a crop repertoire that is among the most genetically diverse in the world. People of the Plow provides detailed documentation of Ethiopian agricultural practices since the early nineteenth century by examining travel narratives, early agricultural surveys, photographs and engravings, modern farming systems research, and the testimony of farmers themselves, collected during McCann’s five years of fieldwork. He then traces the ways those practices have evolved in the twentieth century in response to population growth, urban markets, and the presence of new technologies.
Author: Donald Crummey Publisher: ISBN: 9780299316334 Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
Historians and scholars of Ethiopia have long struggled to understand the "Ethiopian Paradox": that is, how could Africa's most productive food production system, which sustained an extraordinary imperial culture over two millennia, also be home to periodic, gut-wrenching famine and rural poverty? Ethiopia in the late twentieth century has surpassed earlier icons of famine: China, India, Armenia, and Biafra. And yet, ironically, Ethiopia's highland culture also generated, and eventually exported, the iconic cuisine served in Ethiopian restaurants throughout the developed world, and in large cities in Africa itself. Donald Crummey argues that in the face of increasing environmental stress, Ethiopian farmers have innovated and adapted. In the process they have developed effective strategies for managing their environment--strategies too often ignored by conservation projects.
Author: Dessalegn Rahmato Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute ISBN: 9789171063144 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
What do peasants do in the face of severe food crisis and ecological stress, and how do they manage to survive on their own? This study revolves around a case study conducted by the author in the awraja (district) in the Ambassel Wollo province in northeastern Ethiopia. This is in the region that was hit hardest by the 1984-85 famine, which Rahmato calls "the worst tragedy rural Ethiopia had ever experienced". The author also critically examines other literature on famine response. The focus of this study is on what happens before famine comes, and how the peasants prepare for it. From a wealth of evidence, the author concludes that the seeds of famine are sown during the years of recovery.
Author: Alula Pankhurst Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 9780719035371 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
This book is the inside story of the Ethiopian resettlement programme, carried out in the mid-1980s by the Ethiopian government amid fierce international controversy. It relies on the views of the settlers themselves, and is based on an in-depth study carried out by an anthropologist who lived in a resettlement village. Alula Pankhurst dispels current myths about resettlement; while showing the importance of famine and coercion, he highlights social factors in the mosaic of settlers' motivation. He documents the attempt to institute a collectivist model of agriculture and analyses the reasons for its failure. He also examines the effects of Ethiopia's recent economic liberalisation and the impact of aid agencies. The book addresses an increasing Third World phenomenon: state organised relocation. It is a major contribution to the literature on mass-migration and on refugees. By focusing on the interaction between people and the state, it also reassesses a fundamental development problem: the gulf between local and national priorities. Accessible and thought-provoking, Resettlement and famine in Ethiopia will be of interest to anthropologists, students of development studies, and practitioners, and all those concerned by famine, forced migration and socialist attempts to transform societies.
Author: Patrick Webb Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst ISBN: 9780896290952 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 172
Book Description
Concepts and research approach; A record of drought and famine in Ethiopia; Household responses to drought and famine; Agricultural constraints: conflict, policy, and drought; Prices and markets during famine; Public intervention during famine.
Author: James L. Giblin Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 1512816248 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
A historical study of the relationship between political and environmental change in Tanzania's northeastern lowlands, an impoverished region that has been afflicted by severe food shortages throughout the twentieth century.
Author: Thomas P. Ofcansky Publisher: Scarecrow Press ISBN: 0810865661 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 699
Book Description
Ethiopia is one of the world's oldest countries; its Rift Valley may be the location where the ancestors of humankind originated more than four million years ago. With a population of 67 million people today, it is the third most populous country on the African continent after Nigeria and Egypt. It is the source of 86 percent of the water reaching the Aswan Dam in Egypt, most of it carried by the amazing Blue Nile. Ethiopia offers major historical sites such as the pre-Christian palace at Yeha, the stele and tombs of the old Kingdom of Axum, and the rock-carved churches of Lalibela. For anyone interested in Ethiopia, this historical dictionary, through its individual and carefully cross-referenced entries, captures the importance and intrigue of this truly significant African nation. Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia appeals to all levels of readers, providing entries for each of Ethiopia's 85 ethnic groups and covering a broad range of cultural, political, and economic topics. Readers interested in the cultural aspects or who are planning to visit Ethiopia will find a wealth of entries on art, literature, handicrafts, music, dance, bird life, geography, and historic tourist sites. Practitioners in government and non-governmental organizations will find entries on pressing economic, social, and political issues such as HIV/AIDS, female circumcision , debt, human rights, and the environment. The important historical role of missionaries and the combination of conflict and cooperation between Christians and Muslims in the region are also issues reviewed. And, finally, many of the entries highlight relations between Ethiopia and her neighbors-Eritrea, Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, Kenya, and Sudan. In the bibliography, considerable emphasis has been placed on including both new and old materials covering all facets of Ethiopia, organized for easy identification by areas of major interest.
Author: Harold G. Marcus Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520224795 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
"A very ambitious work. . . . Its readability will insure a wide audience. . . . Specialists will be alternately outraged, amused, engaged, and challenged."—James McCann, Boston University
Author: James B. Minahan Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 0313034788 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 720
Book Description
Russians are suppressing the Chechen; Ibo nationalism may yet tear Nigeria apart. With the end of the Cold War, any of the world's stateless peoples could be in tomorrow's headlines. This book provides an essential guide to the stateless nations suppressed or ignored during the Cold War. In more than 200 national surveys, the volume highlights the historical, political, social, economic, and diplomatic evolution of many of the currently emerging nations without states. Including nations from all continents—from the Chechen in Eastern Europe, to the Ibo in Africa, and the Quebeckers in North America—the book addresses the current nationalist resurgence by focusing on the most basic element of any nationalism, the nation itself. The book provides the only source of concise information on stateless nations. Each entry includes the nation's name and alternative names, population statistics, information on major languages and religions, geographical information, independence declarations, information on the national flag, a brief sketch of the primary national group or groups, and a profile of the nation's history and national development to the present. A chronological appendix of declarations of independence helps to set the waves of nationalism in an historical context. A second appendix provides a geographic listing, by region and nation, of national organizations.
Author: James McCann
Author: James McCann
Author: Donald Crummey
Author: Dessalegn Rahmato
Author: Alula Pankhurst
Author: Patrick Webb
Author: James L. Giblin
Author: Thomas P. Ofcansky
Author: Harold G. Marcus
Author: James B. Minahan