Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1950751
Joanna Nayler
ABSTRACT This article illustrates that development discourses are historically constructed and contingent, demonstrating the value of adopting a discursive and historical approach to development projects. It juxtaposes recent and late-colonial Ugandan dam-building, using Owen Falls and Bujagali dams respectively, to bring the past and present into conversation. Focusing on history as the representation of past events shows how actors’ articulation of development tropes is intimately linked with historical associations and claims, and how actors use recent history to advance contemporary aims while discussing development. For example, critiques of contemporary situations are strengthened through unfavourable comparison with a romanticised past, and development planners justify their actions by presenting development projects as different from previous interventions. This historical lens identifies findings that an approach focused on the present might miss, including the ways the late-colonial government emphasised the small-scale nature of its projects and positive remembrances of Owen Falls in contemporary Uganda (in spite of the project not achieving its objectives); large-scale development projects should therefore not only be analysed from the perspective of their ostensible failure. This approach also illustrates how ideas of development are articulated differently in different historical contexts, including more individualised and divergent applications in the contemporary period.
{"title":"‘Much better than earlier’: dam-building in Uganda and understanding development through the past","authors":"Joanna Nayler","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1950751","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1950751","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article illustrates that development discourses are historically constructed and contingent, demonstrating the value of adopting a discursive and historical approach to development projects. It juxtaposes recent and late-colonial Ugandan dam-building, using Owen Falls and Bujagali dams respectively, to bring the past and present into conversation. Focusing on history as the representation of past events shows how actors’ articulation of development tropes is intimately linked with historical associations and claims, and how actors use recent history to advance contemporary aims while discussing development. For example, critiques of contemporary situations are strengthened through unfavourable comparison with a romanticised past, and development planners justify their actions by presenting development projects as different from previous interventions. This historical lens identifies findings that an approach focused on the present might miss, including the ways the late-colonial government emphasised the small-scale nature of its projects and positive remembrances of Owen Falls in contemporary Uganda (in spite of the project not achieving its objectives); large-scale development projects should therefore not only be analysed from the perspective of their ostensible failure. This approach also illustrates how ideas of development are articulated differently in different historical contexts, including more individualised and divergent applications in the contemporary period.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"400 - 420"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48910986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1949119
Allen Munoriyarwa
ABSTRACT The recognition that digital surveillance is becoming ubiquitous has prompted varied responses from targeted groups. This article explores the ways through which journalists resist state-driven digital surveillance in Zimbabwe. It is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with practising journalists, sampled from the print media. The article utilises panopticon theory, which holds that victims of surveillance alter their behaviour upon the realisation of being surveilled. The interviews were subjected to thematic analysis. The article finds, among other issues, that as forms of resistance to surveillance, journalists in Zimbabwe now reduce their ‘digital footprints’ and have started to re-think the spaces in which they engage with their sources. The article argues that journalists, as a discursive community, should keep the issue of state surveillance on the mainstream agenda and maintain both organised and ad-hoc forms of resistance as ways of ‘speaking back to the state’. Conscientising the public can, possibly, provide a positive starting point for responsible, transparent and fair regulation of state surveillance practices and assist in ‘fencing off’ state intrusion in the field of journalism. In addition, journalists should push for legislation that protects their news sources.
{"title":"When watchdogs fight back: resisting state surveillance in everyday investigative reporting practices among Zimbabwean journalists","authors":"Allen Munoriyarwa","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1949119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1949119","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The recognition that digital surveillance is becoming ubiquitous has prompted varied responses from targeted groups. This article explores the ways through which journalists resist state-driven digital surveillance in Zimbabwe. It is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with practising journalists, sampled from the print media. The article utilises panopticon theory, which holds that victims of surveillance alter their behaviour upon the realisation of being surveilled. The interviews were subjected to thematic analysis. The article finds, among other issues, that as forms of resistance to surveillance, journalists in Zimbabwe now reduce their ‘digital footprints’ and have started to re-think the spaces in which they engage with their sources. The article argues that journalists, as a discursive community, should keep the issue of state surveillance on the mainstream agenda and maintain both organised and ad-hoc forms of resistance as ways of ‘speaking back to the state’. Conscientising the public can, possibly, provide a positive starting point for responsible, transparent and fair regulation of state surveillance practices and assist in ‘fencing off’ state intrusion in the field of journalism. In addition, journalists should push for legislation that protects their news sources.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"421 - 441"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1949119","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42769754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1952797
Charlotte Cross
ABSTRACT In the context of increasing interest in the relationship between digital communications and authoritarian politics, this paper considers the criminalisation of online dissent in Tanzania. Based on interviews with police officers, local government officials and mobile phone users, the paper explores contested framings and understandings of “cybercrime”. It argues that contemporary repression of online freedoms can be understood within longer histories of social and political ordering, whereby understandings and experiences of “security” and “development”, and the relationships they imply between government and citizens, are implicated in the delegitimisation of dissent. However, it also finds that social media use enables and amplifies articulation of opposition to repressive measures and may destabilise the politics of security and development that inform the policing of online spaces and politics more broadly. The paper thus contributes, firstly, to understanding the ambiguous and contingent relationships between information and communications technologies and politics in particular places. Secondly, by analysing debates about internet freedom it offers insights into broader negotiations over politics, security and development, which are in turn rendered more urgent by the disruptive impact of new modes of communication.
{"title":"Dissent as cybercrime: social media, security and development in Tanzania","authors":"Charlotte Cross","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1952797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1952797","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the context of increasing interest in the relationship between digital communications and authoritarian politics, this paper considers the criminalisation of online dissent in Tanzania. Based on interviews with police officers, local government officials and mobile phone users, the paper explores contested framings and understandings of “cybercrime”. It argues that contemporary repression of online freedoms can be understood within longer histories of social and political ordering, whereby understandings and experiences of “security” and “development”, and the relationships they imply between government and citizens, are implicated in the delegitimisation of dissent. However, it also finds that social media use enables and amplifies articulation of opposition to repressive measures and may destabilise the politics of security and development that inform the policing of online spaces and politics more broadly. The paper thus contributes, firstly, to understanding the ambiguous and contingent relationships between information and communications technologies and politics in particular places. Secondly, by analysing debates about internet freedom it offers insights into broader negotiations over politics, security and development, which are in turn rendered more urgent by the disruptive impact of new modes of communication.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"442 - 463"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1952797","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42021089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1952796
A. Bolin
ABSTRACT Heritage, a practice shot through with political forces, is mobilized by states within their international relationships through methods such as heritage diplomacy. Focusing on the connections between Rwanda and Germany, this article traces how heritage serves as a technique of foreign relations for the Rwandan state. The uses of heritage are shaped by the state’s higher-level political orientations, especially the project of agaciro, which pursues an agenda of increased sovereignty for Rwanda in relation to the rest of the world. This conditions how ‘shared heritage’ and heritage repatriation contribute to establishing strategic alliances and decolonizing, making heritage part of a suite of tools used to advantageously reposition the country in the international arena. The article deepens our understanding of the Rwandan state’s governing techniques and examines heritage’s role as a mediator of international relationships, even for less-powerful nations whose agency is sometimes neglected in discussions of heritage diplomacy.
{"title":"The strategic internationalism of Rwandan heritage","authors":"A. Bolin","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1952796","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1952796","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Heritage, a practice shot through with political forces, is mobilized by states within their international relationships through methods such as heritage diplomacy. Focusing on the connections between Rwanda and Germany, this article traces how heritage serves as a technique of foreign relations for the Rwandan state. The uses of heritage are shaped by the state’s higher-level political orientations, especially the project of agaciro, which pursues an agenda of increased sovereignty for Rwanda in relation to the rest of the world. This conditions how ‘shared heritage’ and heritage repatriation contribute to establishing strategic alliances and decolonizing, making heritage part of a suite of tools used to advantageously reposition the country in the international arena. The article deepens our understanding of the Rwandan state’s governing techniques and examines heritage’s role as a mediator of international relationships, even for less-powerful nations whose agency is sometimes neglected in discussions of heritage diplomacy.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"485 - 504"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1952796","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49464657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1951944
Atenchong Talleh Nkobou, A. Ainslie
ABSTRACT Research on large-scale land investments (LSLIs) can provide valuable insights into the support for developmental nationalism in Tanzania today. ‘Developmental nationalism’ is ‘a creative variant of liberation’, which purports to make ‘Tanzania great again’. The nationalist turn of late President Magufuli was grounded in political ideology and the selective history of the past that swept him to power. However, there is limited research on how political practice around land investments contribute to trust and support for public institutions. This paper makes two key contributions to scholarship on the political economy of LSLIs. First, we examine the messy politics of LSLIs, the failures in design and implementation, and the rise in local support for developmental nationalism in two rural settings in Tanzania. Second, using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), we identify distinct groups of individuals based on their trust in the President, the ruling party (CCM), the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) and support for LSLIs. We define political trust as ‘an evaluative orientation towards an institution or government, based on people's normative expectations’.
{"title":"‘Developmental nationalism?’ Political trust and the politics of large-scale land investment in Magufuli's Tanzania","authors":"Atenchong Talleh Nkobou, A. Ainslie","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1951944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1951944","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Research on large-scale land investments (LSLIs) can provide valuable insights into the support for developmental nationalism in Tanzania today. ‘Developmental nationalism’ is ‘a creative variant of liberation’, which purports to make ‘Tanzania great again’. The nationalist turn of late President Magufuli was grounded in political ideology and the selective history of the past that swept him to power. However, there is limited research on how political practice around land investments contribute to trust and support for public institutions. This paper makes two key contributions to scholarship on the political economy of LSLIs. First, we examine the messy politics of LSLIs, the failures in design and implementation, and the rise in local support for developmental nationalism in two rural settings in Tanzania. Second, using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), we identify distinct groups of individuals based on their trust in the President, the ruling party (CCM), the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) and support for LSLIs. We define political trust as ‘an evaluative orientation towards an institution or government, based on people's normative expectations’.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"378 - 399"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1951944","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45612391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-14DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1938812
J. Jackson
ABSTRACT Despite colonial echoes, settlement schemes represent a major element in ‘nation-building’ endeavours in Tanzania's history. Their evolution through the 1960s was circuitous and haphazard. This article explores the origins of one of the earliest schemes linked to Julius Nyerere and TANU: the Kilombero Settlement Scheme (KSS). It traces its origins from 1959 and ragged progress over the subsequent decade before its eventual transmutation under Ujamaa. Nyerere personally promoted KSS and its basic premise in sending unemployed men from cities to uncleared countryside to grow sugar cane for sale to a local factory. The scheme's extended trajectory reveals its palimpsestic nature through a history layered by different approaches to the reorganisation of rural life in Tanzania. This was an embryonic testing ground, both in terms of the politics of resettlement and of funding development projects of this kind. For one of the surviving settlers, they were ‘Nyerere's People’ as ideologies met practical realities. KSS was flawed but resilient. For its failures more than its successes, it became an important model in Tanzania's programme of social development for understanding the challenges of rural transformation.
{"title":"‘Off to Sugar Valley’: the Kilombero Settlement Scheme and ‘Nyerere's People’, 1959–69","authors":"J. Jackson","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1938812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1938812","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Despite colonial echoes, settlement schemes represent a major element in ‘nation-building’ endeavours in Tanzania's history. Their evolution through the 1960s was circuitous and haphazard. This article explores the origins of one of the earliest schemes linked to Julius Nyerere and TANU: the Kilombero Settlement Scheme (KSS). It traces its origins from 1959 and ragged progress over the subsequent decade before its eventual transmutation under Ujamaa. Nyerere personally promoted KSS and its basic premise in sending unemployed men from cities to uncleared countryside to grow sugar cane for sale to a local factory. The scheme's extended trajectory reveals its palimpsestic nature through a history layered by different approaches to the reorganisation of rural life in Tanzania. This was an embryonic testing ground, both in terms of the politics of resettlement and of funding development projects of this kind. For one of the surviving settlers, they were ‘Nyerere's People’ as ideologies met practical realities. KSS was flawed but resilient. For its failures more than its successes, it became an important model in Tanzania's programme of social development for understanding the challenges of rural transformation.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"505 - 526"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1938812","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44532163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1920240
Emma Hunter, Jason Mosley, R. Vokes
{"title":"Editorial announcement","authors":"Emma Hunter, Jason Mosley, R. Vokes","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1920240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1920240","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"189 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1920240","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42619350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1913700
Bilge Sahin
ABSTRACT Through the complementarity principle of the International Criminal Court, international criminal law enforcement is transferred from international courts to national courts. This has led to an increase of international actors’ focus on national courts to achieve international criminal justice. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) presents a significant example to examine the prosecution of international crimes by national courts and international actors’ support to Congolese legal system to promote complementarity and international criminal justice. International actors provide assistance to mobile hearings to prosecute international crimes and to implement complementarity at the national level in the eastern DRC. This article explores mobile hearings through their role in implementing complementarity in the DRC and international and national influences on mobile hearings regarding the prosecution of international crimes. The main argument is that although mobile hearings are significant to bring justice closer to local communities and increase the visibility of justice in remote and rural areas, their independence is in question as a result of the selective interest of international actors and political interferences coming from Congolese political and military elites.
{"title":"Mobile hearings in the Eastern DRC: prosecuting international crimes and implementing complementarity at national level","authors":"Bilge Sahin","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1913700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1913700","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Through the complementarity principle of the International Criminal Court, international criminal law enforcement is transferred from international courts to national courts. This has led to an increase of international actors’ focus on national courts to achieve international criminal justice. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) presents a significant example to examine the prosecution of international crimes by national courts and international actors’ support to Congolese legal system to promote complementarity and international criminal justice. International actors provide assistance to mobile hearings to prosecute international crimes and to implement complementarity at the national level in the eastern DRC. This article explores mobile hearings through their role in implementing complementarity in the DRC and international and national influences on mobile hearings regarding the prosecution of international crimes. The main argument is that although mobile hearings are significant to bring justice closer to local communities and increase the visibility of justice in remote and rural areas, their independence is in question as a result of the selective interest of international actors and political interferences coming from Congolese political and military elites.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"297 - 316"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1913700","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48297302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1913704
A. Bashizi, An Ansoms, Guillaume Ndayikengurutse, Romuald Adili Amani, Joel Baraka Akilimali, Christian Chiza, I. Karangwa, Laurianne Mobali, E. Mudinga, David Mutabesha, R. Niyonkuru, Joseph Nsabimana, Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka, Emmanuelle Piccoli
ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 crisis in Africa, several contradictory discourses have tried to predict how the continent will experience the pandemic. Based on a qualitative approach, this article goes beyond generalized and arbitrary predictions and analyzes how three countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa have managed the pandemic. We first analyze which measures the respective governments of the three countries – and their decentralized authorities – have taken. We also analyze up to which extend international prescriptions – as propagated by the World Health Organization – have influenced their choices. Second, we analyze how government measures have transformed throughout implementation and interacted with the specific circumstances of each context. Authorities, on the one hand, navigated between rigid and more flexible interpretation of national prescriptions, entering into practical arrangements or adopting force. Populations on the other hand have resorted to acceptance, circumvention, contestation or resistance. Our research ultimately points to the way in which political dynamics, resistance, violence, and local redefine both national policies and their international reference frames. In this way, the governance dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in the African Great Lakes region provide a lens through which we can complexify our understandings of real governance in Africa.
{"title":"Real governance of the COVID-19 crisis in the Great Lakes region of Africa","authors":"A. Bashizi, An Ansoms, Guillaume Ndayikengurutse, Romuald Adili Amani, Joel Baraka Akilimali, Christian Chiza, I. Karangwa, Laurianne Mobali, E. Mudinga, David Mutabesha, R. Niyonkuru, Joseph Nsabimana, Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka, Emmanuelle Piccoli","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1913704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1913704","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 crisis in Africa, several contradictory discourses have tried to predict how the continent will experience the pandemic. Based on a qualitative approach, this article goes beyond generalized and arbitrary predictions and analyzes how three countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa have managed the pandemic. We first analyze which measures the respective governments of the three countries – and their decentralized authorities – have taken. We also analyze up to which extend international prescriptions – as propagated by the World Health Organization – have influenced their choices. Second, we analyze how government measures have transformed throughout implementation and interacted with the specific circumstances of each context. Authorities, on the one hand, navigated between rigid and more flexible interpretation of national prescriptions, entering into practical arrangements or adopting force. Populations on the other hand have resorted to acceptance, circumvention, contestation or resistance. Our research ultimately points to the way in which political dynamics, resistance, violence, and local redefine both national policies and their international reference frames. In this way, the governance dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in the African Great Lakes region provide a lens through which we can complexify our understandings of real governance in Africa.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"190 - 213"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1913704","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41803636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2021.1907704
Katharina Newbery
ABSTRACT The Ethiopian military intervention to remove the Union of Islamic Courts from Mogadishu in December 2006 has been interpreted in overlapping narratives of historical-religious conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia, proxy war with Eritrea, and counter-terrorism. This article adds another: the Ethiopian government's own dominant narrative of danger at the time. Based on a discourse analysis of materials generated during a year of fieldwork in Addis Ababa, the article explores how Ethiopia's political leadership constructed developments in Somalia as an existential threat to the Ethiopian state. It argues that the language and actions of specific actors were presented as threatening the idea of the post-1991 Ethiopian state and, more specifically, the foundational narrative with which the EPRDF-led Ethiopian government sought ontological security for Ethiopia as a distinct political community and international actor. By focusing on the relationship between processes of collective identity formation and perceptions of (in)security, this article highlights the role of state identity narratives for understanding evolving threat perceptions and their political implications in the Horn of Africa.
{"title":"State identity narratives and threat construction in the Horn of Africa: revisiting Ethiopia's 2006 intervention in Somalia","authors":"Katharina Newbery","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2021.1907704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1907704","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Ethiopian military intervention to remove the Union of Islamic Courts from Mogadishu in December 2006 has been interpreted in overlapping narratives of historical-religious conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia, proxy war with Eritrea, and counter-terrorism. This article adds another: the Ethiopian government's own dominant narrative of danger at the time. Based on a discourse analysis of materials generated during a year of fieldwork in Addis Ababa, the article explores how Ethiopia's political leadership constructed developments in Somalia as an existential threat to the Ethiopian state. It argues that the language and actions of specific actors were presented as threatening the idea of the post-1991 Ethiopian state and, more specifically, the foundational narrative with which the EPRDF-led Ethiopian government sought ontological security for Ethiopia as a distinct political community and international actor. By focusing on the relationship between processes of collective identity formation and perceptions of (in)security, this article highlights the role of state identity narratives for understanding evolving threat perceptions and their political implications in the Horn of Africa.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"255 - 273"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17531055.2021.1907704","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43284473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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