Creating and Crossing Social Boundaries in Ethiopia

Susanne Epple (ed.)

There exists a growing literature on the diversity of ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other
identities in Ethiopia, more recently with a special focus on identity politics and ethnic-based
federalism. The present book is meant to complement the general literature in three different
ways.
First, this volume is not about identities per se. Rather it focuses on the making and unmaking of
social boundaries that in turn define and redefine identities. In other words, the book deals with
the dynamics of inventing, affirming, and emphasizing boundaries on the one hand, and their
downplaying, ignoring, manipulating, crossing, or eliminating on the other.
Second, the book provides systematically organized comprehensive perspectives on social
boundaries. Thematically, the various boundary perspectives provided in this book relate to very
different social groupings and the examples looked at encompass territorial, ethnic, class, caste
and gender and age related boundaries. In terms of level, both inter-group and intra-group
boundary dynamics are looked at. The examined boundaries are articulated along linguistic lines,
through ethnic identification and aesthetic codes, on socio-economic backgrounds, historical
narratives and generational differences. They are recognized and enforced through social
demarcations, adherence to religious values, the observation of cultural prohibitions and the
erection of physical barriers. Geographically, examples are taken from the urban context, e.g. the
capital Addis Ababa, and from different mostly rural areas in the Southern Nations Nationalities
and Peoples Region. These include the surroundings of Shashamane town, the Gamo Highlands
and Giddicho Island in North Omo Zone, the Nyangatom, Daasanech, Maale, Bashada people
and neighbouring groups in South Omo Zone, and the Konso people who own their own district.
One paper speaks of the epistemological boundaries existing in the academic landscape
concerned with Oromo studies.
Third, the book establishes that in most cases social boundaries are created consciously and
strategically, and in pursuit of self-interest of the involved actors. This may involve the
agreement and accommodate the needs of the actors on either only one or both sides of a
boundary. If the actors on one side are in a more powerful situation than those on the other side,
they may impose and dominate the definition of a boundary on the other. Likewise, the more

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powerful actors may also decide to eliminate an existing boundary and incorporate a weaker
group. Once boundaries have been established, it seems that they are affirmed, emphasized, or
left blurred so long as they fulfil the best interest of at least one of the groups. Growing
dissatisfaction with their functional relevance may lead to the change of a boundary through its
manipulation, crossing, or elimination. Here, again, dominant actors may impose a change on the
weaker, while weaker ones may have to live with a boundary until possibly external factors or
agents support them or act in their favour. This seems to apply to intra and inter-group dynamics
alike. In case of power equality between the various agents, a boundary may be acknowledged,
wanted and supported from both sides, but at the same time the way it is defined and perceived
may be very different, even opposing.
Apart from the above general contributions of the book, the individual chapters have their
specific central arguments. The first three contributions on the “Alteration and Crossing of
Boundaries” are examples on how boundaries are created, manipulated or crossed by individuals
or whole groups. Yeraswork Admassie describes the recent changes of class relations in the
Ethiopian capital and how they are expressed in architecture and city planning. The class
boundaries between rich and poor have become recently more emphasized and publicly
articulated through the erection of fences around the inner-city gated communities. Hereby, not
only everyday interaction between different classes have become nearly impossible, but also
previously existing social networks, mutual recognition and support diminished. Gebre Yntiso
shows how the Nyangatom ethnic group consciously kept its physical and social boundaries
completely open for some neighbours, blurred for others, and closed still for others. This rational
and strategic decision-making behaviour, the author argues, represents something more than a
cost-benefit analysis aimed at maximizing economic gain or attaining military superiority. Bosha
Bombe explores how the strong boundary based on perceived impurity of one section of the
Ganta people is continuously crossed in two directions: Members of the mainstream society
become members of the despised group of slave descendents through close interacton resulting
in pollution, and members of the despised group re-integrate into the mainstream society through
undergoing a costly cleansing process.
The second section of the book deals with intra-ethnic boundaries between different age- or
status groups. Susanne Epple highlights the dynamics around status boundaries between different
female roles related to age. She outlines the cultural mechanisms used to convince girls to

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identify with their roles and to motivate them to cross the boundary between adolescence and
adulthood, which in many cases involves painful changes. Sophia Thubauville shows how social
boundaries can be created through time. Using the example of younger and older Maale females,
she shows that the different times individuals experience can create significant differences
between generations. Yvan Houtteman looks at diverse intra-ethnic boundaries among the
Daasanech, the complex interconnections between the different categories of people and how the
well-being and misfortune of individuals are locally explained by his or her relationship with
others. Nicole Poissonnier demonstrates that the boundary separating the living from the dead
becomes permeable when someone dies. The deceased leaves the world of the living, but also the
descendants change their status through influence from the other side of the boundary: among the
Konso death is a moment when the identity of the deceased is newly defined and can even be
enhanced through elaborate festivities organized bz the descendants, whose social status then
also increases.
The three chapters in the last section show that different and even opposing meanings can be
given to the same boundary. Using the Oromo people as an example, Thomas Osmond outlines
how ethnic boundaries can be drawn and defined differently by scholars of various backgrounds
and at different times. Hereby he not only discusses the wide range of what “being Oromo” can
mean, but also highlights the boundaries between different epistemologies. Wolfgang Bender
explores the contradictions between the visions of Rastafari immigrants to Ethiopia and the way
they are perceived by their local people. While the Rastafarians attempt to eliminate the ethnic
and cultural boundaries between them and their hosts, their Ethiopian hosts perceive the settlers
rather as strangers and strive to keep the boundary between them and the Rastafarians alive and
strong. Susanne Epple and Fabienne Braukmann describe the diverging views on the ethnic
identity of the culturally and linguistically very different Bayso and Haro people. The two groups
have always observed a strict boundary between them, but externally they have been perceived
and are classified until today as one ethnic group called “Gidiccho”, a label that has never been
accepted by them.

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I. CONTRIBUTORS

1. Wolfgang Bender is social anthropologist with a special interest in popular African

music, arts and literature. He did research in many west and east and South African
countries, as well as in the Anglophone Caribbean. Besides numerous publications on
historical and contemporary African music and arts, he organized many exhibitions
within and outside of Germany, established collections and archives of music and arts at
three German universities and published many musical records and CDs with traditional
and contemporary African music and oral literature. Presently he is associated visiting
professor at the Iwalewa-House of Bayreuth University.

2. Bosha Bombe has a BA degree in history from Bahir Dar University and got his MA
degree in social anthropology from Addis Ababa University in 2013. His research interest
focuses on historical and contemporary practices of slavery, exclusion and inclusion of
social classes, ethnic identity and interethnic relations, conflict and social boundaries.

3. Fabienne Braukmann is a social anthropologist. Since 2010 her regional focus has been
Southern Ethiopia where she has been conducting fieldwork among the Haro. She took
her M.A. degree from the University of Cologne, Germany and is now continuing her
research for her PhD. Currently, she is employed as a researcher in a language
documentation project at the Asien-Afrika-Institut, University of Hamburg funded by the
Volkswagen foundation. Her research interests include culture and environment
adaptation, mobility, marginalization, minority groups, cultural change, globalization and
urbanization.

4. Susanne Epple has MA and PhD degrees in social anthropology from Mainz University.
She is presently employed as assistant professor at the Department of Social
Anthropology, Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, and an associated researcher in a
culture and language documentation project located at the University of Hamburg in
Germany. She did extensive fieldwork in Southern Ethiopia among the Bashada (since

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 1994) and among the Bayso (since 2012). Her focus of interest lies in the areas of
pastoral societies, gender and age, social discourse and identity, material culture, belief
systems and conversion, cultural and legal pluralism, human rights.

5. Gebre Yntiso Deko is associate professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at

Addis Ababa University (AAU). He earned his BA in Sociology and MA in Social
Anthropology at AAU and did his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Florida. His
research interests include population movement, diaspora and development, culture and
development, urbanity, inter-ethnic relations, conflict resolution, civil society
organizations, and disadvantaged groups. Gebre published journal articles, book chapters,
and monographs on many of these topics.

6. Yvan Houtteman has an MA degree in Philosophy and Comparative Studies of

Knowledge Systems from Ghent University and did his PhD in Comparative Sciences of
Culture at the same University. Currently, he is lector in philosophy and intercultural
studies at Hogeschool Gent. His general interest lies in Adventure therapy and their
effects on behavioral problems of adolescents. Between 1995 and 1997, he did extensive
fieldwork on body and social identity among the Daasanech for the Museum of Middle
Africa in Tervuren and wrote his PhD on Daasanech rituals. Presently, he is planning to
resume his research among the Daasanech focusing on their confrontation with
globalization.

7. Thomas Osmond has a PhD in Social Anthropology from Aix-Marseille University in

France. Presently, he is working as an associate researcher at the French Centre for
Ethiopian Studies (CFEE) in Addis Ababa. He is also affiliated to the Centre d'études des
mondes africains in France (CNRS/Université d'Aix-Marseille). Previous employments
included assistant professorships at Addis Ababa University and Haramaya University in
Ethiopia. His research topics are related to political, religious and historical issues. He
has conducted extensive fieldwork on Oromo identity in several parts of Ethiopia for
more than ten years.

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8. Nicole Poissonnier is a social anthropologist currently working with EIRENE –
Internationaler Christlicher Friedensdienst e.V. in the Civil Peace Service Program in
Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. She did her MA in Social Anthropology at the
University of Mainz, and her PhD in the same field at the University of Goettingen. She
has done fieldwork in Ethiopia among the Bashada from 1994 to 1999 and among the
Konso from 1999 to 2005. Her interests lie in the fields of conflict, conflict
transformation and concepts of violence, cultural aspects of communication and
expression of emotions, “maleness” and virility and material culture. Her regional focus
is on southern Ethiopia and eastern DR Congo.

9. Sophia Thubauville is research fellow and head of library at the Frobenius Institute,
Frankfurt. Earlier she has worked at the University of Mainz, the South Omo Research
Center in Ethiopia and the Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. She
has done ethnographic field research in Ethiopia among the Maale and Ongota of
Southern Ethiopia as well as on Indian academics. She co-edited the volume “Cultural
Neighborhood in Southern Ethiopia” and the focus issue “Cultural Diversity in Ethiopia”
in the journal Paideuma. Currently her writing is devoted to gender, questions of time and
identity, cultural policy, migration and higher education.

10. Yeraswork Admassie is Associate Professor of Sociology at Addis Ababa University.

He obtained his BA and MA degrees from the Swedish University of Lund, and his PhD
from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. He has extensive research experience and has
written on matters relating to the social dynamics of forestry, land degradation and
conservation, rural development, as well as on urban phenomena and urban issues in
Ethiopia. He published/co-published three books and numerous articles and research
manuscripts and rendered 30 research related consultancy services to international
organizations, civil society organizations and government organizations. He was one of
the founders of the Forum for Social Studies (FSS) and the first President of the
Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers and Social Anthropologists
(ESSSWA).