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AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Micknai Arefaine for the degree of Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology presented on June 6, 2019. Title: Injera in the Kapitalocene: Understanding Women’s Perceptions of Change in Mekelle, Ethiopia Abstract approved: ______________________________________________________ Kenneth Maes Women’s lives in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Mekele, Ethiopia are very organized, systematic, and sophisticated. The women in this study model, express, and reflect the values of community, trust, care, stability, and futurity through their perceptions and sentiments regarding social and political change. I document how these values are reflected in their social reproduction and protection of injera as a staple of Ethiopian cuisine. The preparation of injera occurs in a sacred and gendered spatio-temporal location that is only accessible to women and children, and hopefully, in some small way, the readers of this thesis. This research serves to examine the micropolitics of everyday life as it occurs between women. Injera Epistemology is an emergent theoretical framework inspired in part by the work of Meredith Abarca, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, and Shawn Wilson. I use this framework to situate three women’s stories within the grander narrative of women’s empowerment in Ethiopia and beyond. ©Copyright by Micknai Arefaine June 6, 2019 All Rights Reserved Injera in the Kapitalocene: Understanding Women’s Perceptions of Change in Mekelle, Ethiopia by Micknai Arefaine A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Presented June 6, 2019 Commencement June 2020 Master of Arts thesis of Micknai Arefaine presented on June 6, 2019. APPROVED: _______________________________________________________________________ Major Professor, representing Applied Anthropology _______________________________________________________________________ Director of the School of Language, Culture, and Society _______________________________________________________________________ Dean of the Graduate School I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my thesis to any reader upon request. _______________________________________________________________________ Micknai Arefaine, Author ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere appreciation for the love, support, patience, and advice of the many beings who contributed to me reaching this milestone. Every community owes its existence and vitality to generations from around the world who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some were brought here against their will, some were drawn to leave their distant homes in the hope of a better life, and some have lived on this land for more generations than can be counted. Truth and acknowledgment are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. We begin this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth. We are on the ancestral lands of the Ampinefu (or "Mary's River") band of the Kalapuya People. After the Kalapuya Treaty (Treaty of Dayton) in 1855, Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to what are now the Grand Ronde and Siletz reservations, and are now members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. We pay respects to their elders past and present. Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today.* *Resources provided and collaborated with: Luhui Whitebear, Emily Bowling, Natchee Barnd, Micknai Arefaine, and the www.usdac.us (updated, October 2018) CONTRIBUTION OF AUTHORS I wrote this thesis with Tirhas, Lucy, Alem, Fana, and Samira. I also relied on the stories of my father, Engdawork Arefaine, mother, Hamelmal Shiferaw, and the many ancestors living and past whose collective story this thesis belongs to. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter 1: More Injera Please...………………….............……………………………………… 1 Chapter 2: Za Gualay……………………………………....…………………………………… 22 Chapter 3: Fikir Yelem …………..……………………………………………....……………....45 Chapter 4: Desta... …………………………………………….…………………………………55 Chapter 5: Selam ina Asphalt ……….......…………………………………………………….…64 Chapter 6: Discussion ……….………....………………………………………………………...70 Bibliography ……………………...………...…………………………………………….………81 Appendices …………………………....………………………..………………………………..87 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Making injera………………………………...………...…………………..…….…3 2. Za Gualay…...………………….…………………………………………………..22 3. Circles and Spirals…………………….……………………………………….…...32 4. Map of Tigray Region……………………………………………………………....39 5. Mekele City…………………………….……………………………………..…....40 6. Mebrat Yelem…………………….………………………………………………...49 7. Prep Party……………………………….………………………..………….….….58 8. Christening Day…………………..…………………...…………………….….….. 59 9. Stone Homes….……………………………………………………………....…….66 10. Modern Dwellings………...….……………………………………………….…..67 LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix Page A. Food Prices ……………………………...……………..……….….……87 B. Women’s Policy Timeline…………………………………………….....89 DEDICATION To Manale Abohay Zewdie, whom I lovingly called Tatye and who lovingly named me Zemen. 1 Chapter 1: More Injera Please Introduction With the help of Tirhas, Lucy, and Alem (all pseudonyms), the women with whom I resided in Mekele, Ethiopia, my research works to document how some Ethiopian women perceive and experience political and cultural change. I situate three women’s stories, perceptions and sentiments within the grander narrative of women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming in Ethiopia and beyond. These women model the values of love, relationality, trust, care, stability, self-determination, spirituality, and futurity. I echo Yaffa Truelove’s response to the call of scholars like J.K. Gibson-Graham and Richa Nagar to increase research into the informal spaces and practices of globalization, including household relations and the feminization of spaces and labor within communities in order to reveal how gender and women’s lives are shaped by larger economic forces (Truelove, 2011). For the purposes of this thesis, I focus on making multi-scalar linkages and double down on Chandra Mohanty’s claim that the ‘‘micropolitics of context, subjectivity, and struggle’’ provide critical insights into the operation and consequences of global economic and political systems. Such analyses allow us to link ‘‘everyday life and local gendered contexts and ideologies to the larger, transnational political and economic structures and ideologies of capitalism’’ (Mohanty, 2003, pp. 225-226). Women’s lives in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Mekele, Ethiopia are very organized, systematic, and sophisticated. In writing about their lives, I wish to answer the calls of Tiina Seppälä, Gayarti Spivak, and Sara C. Motta to bring forward their voices in a way that does not disregard contextual differences, produce them as “a singular, monolithic subject,” or 2 overlook their concrete agency and experience (Seppälä, 2016). This thesis and research do not “foreground men’s relationships to one another (which classical ethnography does quite well), or women’s relationships to men” (Visweswran, 1994, p. 20), but instead focus’ on women’s relationships to other women, to examine how lived experiences and practices are productive of, and produced through gendered ideologies, structural power relations, and processes of both local and global change. I also provide support from my own positionality as well as cultural, historical, economic, and political context while drawing from a rich tradition of feminist analyses of informal practices and the economies and micropolitics of everyday life. Injera Epistemology is a theoretical framework that emerged from witnessing how these values are reflected in their social reproduction and protection of injera as one of the staples of Ethiopian cuisine. The preparation of injera occurs in a sacred and gendered spatio-temporal location that is only accessible to women and children, and hopefully, in some small way, the readers of this thesis. I use Injera Epistemology to map out the ways in which the aforementioned values of love, relationality, trust, care, stability, self-determination, spirituality, and futurity, along with power, agency, resilience, and persistence, are reflections of the personal values and visions of what these three women see in the world. It serves as the grounding theoretical framework for my research as it de-centers Western epistemologies and ontology and moves towards a frame that centers Ethiopian women’s ways of knowing and being. It informs my research methods and I claim this as an indigenous research framework, as it emphasizes relationality and accountability (Wilson, 2008). 3 Figure 1. Making injera: (Above) An Ethiopian woman in Mekele pours injera batter onto an electric magogo. (Below) She is visiting her friends, who live on the compound and share the injera kitchen where she is cooking. They are socializing in the room while they work together to make injera. (Photos by author) 4 Broader Impact This research and thesis contributes to a small but existing body of literature on women’s political lives in Ethiopia by documenting their perceptions of the appointment of women to the Ethiopian presidency and to 50 percent of cabinet seats by the new prime minister, Abiy