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Customary law and traditional authorities continue to play highly
complex and contested roles in contemporary African states.
Reversing the common preoccupation with studying the impact of the
post/colonial state on customary regimes, this volume analyses how
the interactions between state and non-state normative orders have
shaped the everyday practices of the state. It argues that, in
their daily work, local officials are confronted with a paradox of
customary law: operating under politico-legal pluralism and limited
state capacity, bureaucrats must often, paradoxically, deal with
custom - even though the form and logic of customary rule is not
easily compatible and frequently incommensurable with the form and
logic of the state - in order to do their work as a state. Given
the self-contradictory nature of this endeavour, officials end up
processing, rather than solving, this paradox in multiple,
inconsistent and piecemeal ways. Assembling inventive case studies
on state-driven land reforms in South Africa and Tanzania, the
police in Mozambique, witchcraft in southern Sudan, constitutional
reform in South Sudan, Guinea's long duree of changing state
engagements with custom, and hybrid political orders in Somaliland,
this volume offers important insights into the divergent strategies
used by African officials in handling this paradox of customary law
and, somehow, getting their work done.
Borders offer opportunities as well as restrictions, and in the
Horn of Africa they are used as economic, political, identity and
status resources by borderland peoples. State borders are more than
barriers. They structure social, economic and political spaces and
as such provide opportunities as well as obstacles for the
communities straddling both sides of the border. This book deals
with the conduits and opportunities of state borders in the Horn of
Africa, and investigates how the people living there exploit them
through various strategies. Using a micro level perspective, the
case studies, which include the borders of Djibouti, Eritrea,
Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, focus on
opportunities, highlight the agency of the borderlanders, and
acknowledge the permeability but consequentiality of the borders.
Dereje Feyissa is Africa Research Director at the International Law
and Policy Institute and Adjunct Professor at Addis Ababa
University, Ethiopia. Markus Virgil Hoehne is a Lecturer at the
Institute of Anthropology at Leipzig University.
Borders offer opportunities as well as restrictions, and in the
Horn of Africa they are used as economic, political, identity and
status resources by borderland peoples. State borders are more than
barriers. They structure social, economic and political spaces and
as such provide opportunities as well as obstacles for the
communities straddling both sides of the border. This book deals
with the conduits and opportunities of state borders in the Horn of
Africa, and investigates how the people living there exploit state
borders through various strategies. Using a micro level
perspective, the case studies, which includethe Horn and Eastern
Africa, particularly the borders of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, focus on opportunities,
highlight the agency of the borderlanders, and acknowledge the
permeabilitybut consequentiality of the borders. DEREJE FEYISSA,
Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany; MARKUS
VIRGIL HOEHNE, Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Halle,
Germany.
Dealing with the dynamics of identification and conflict, this book
uses theoretical orientations ranging from political ecology to
rational choice theory, interpretive approaches, Marxism and
multiscalar analysis. Case studies set in Africa, Europe and
Central Asia are grouped in three sections devoted to pastoralism,
identity and migration. What connects all of these anthropological
explorations is a close focus on processes of identification and
conflict at the level of particular actors in relation to the
behaviour of large aggregates of people and to systemic conditions.
Customary law and traditional authorities continue to play highly
complex and contested roles in contemporary African states.
Reversing the common preoccupation with studying the impact of the
post/colonial state on customary regimes, this volume analyses how
the interactions between state and non-state normative orders have
shaped the everyday practices of the state. It argues that, in
their daily work, local officials are confronted with a paradox of
customary law: operating under politico-legal pluralism and limited
state capacity, bureaucrats must often, paradoxically, deal with
custom - even though the form and logic of customary rule is not
easily compatible and frequently incommensurable with the form and
logic of the state - in order to do their work as a state. Given
the self-contradictory nature of this endeavour, officials end up
processing, rather than solving, this paradox in multiple,
inconsistent and piecemeal ways. Assembling inventive case studies
on state-driven land reforms in South Africa and Tanzania, the
police in Mozambique, witchcraft in southern Sudan, constitutional
reform in South Sudan, Guinea's long duree of changing state
engagements with custom, and hybrid political orders in Somaliland,
this volume offers important insights into the divergent strategies
used by African officials in handling this paradox of customary law
and, somehow, getting their work done.
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