Values and Change in a Southwest Ethiopian (Aari) Community
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Whatever Happened to Respect? Values and Change in a Southwest Ethiopian (Aari) Community Julian Jasper Sommerschuh Jesus College, Cambridge May, 2019 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Declaration This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the relevant Degree Committee. Whatever Happened to Respect? Values and Change in a Southwest Ethiopian (Aari) Community Julian Sommerschuh Abstract Based on 22 months of fieldwork in highland southwestern Ethiopia, this thesis focuses on the role of values in processes of social change. The thesis thus joins current efforts to move beyond seeing values exclusively as factors of social reproduction. Extending earlier research, I argue that it is not only the adoption of new values that can lead to profound change. Established values can be powerful drivers of change, too: The desire to realize their values more fully can motivate people to take up new and substantially different forms of practice. At the same time, what promises a fuller realization of one value may turn out to undermine another, and this can motivate further change. My theoretical argument emerges from an ethnographic analysis of change in Dell, a rural Aari community in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region. The starting point of this analysis is the people of Dell’s frequent lament about a change for the worse in the social life of their community. On their account, feasting and everyday hospitality are on the wane, neighbours hardly visit each other anymore, there is less unity and affection among kin, and greed, envy and selfishness are on the rise. Summarily, Dell people discuss these changes as a decline of ‘respect’ (Aari’af: bonshmi, Amharic: keber). To explain this decline as well as to understand how people cope with it, this thesis examines the recent history of Dell. The first part of the thesis shows that the decline of respect has been an effect of attempts to better realize established values through new cultural means. First, since the late 1990s, almost two thirds of the population have become evangelical Christians. Motivated by a quest for blessings, conversion came at the cost of respect: it is only by abstaining from numerous practices which previously mediated respect that God’s blessing can be secured. Second, over the past decade, Dell people have embarked on a quest for economic development. Motivated by a long-standing concern with building ‘name’ through wealth, the pursuit of development requires shifting resources from kinship and commensality – which afford respect – to modern forms of wealth – which do not. In the second part of the thesis, I examine two responses to the decline of respect, both of which constitute attempts to revive a more respectful mode of sociality. I discuss the Evangelicals’ current struggle to mobilize Christianity as a way to confine people’s feverish quest for development and the antagonisms that are its result. And I analyse the recent emergence of an Ethiopian Orthodox community in Dell as an attempt to rebuild relations centred on commensality. Primarily a contribution to the anthropology of values and the study of change, this thesis also engages with debates about Christian individualism, economic development as an ethical project, the relation between evangelical Christianity and economic development, and dis/continuity in conversion to Orthodox Christianity. Table of Contents Introduction i. Starting Points / 1 ii. The Anthropology of Values and Change / 5 iii. Thesis Outline / 16 iv. Introducing Dell: Place, History, Fieldwork / 19 1. Respect: Its Potentials and Perils in Traditional Practice 1.1 Introduction / 28 1.2 Why Karta is ‘Good For Respect’ / 31 1.3 The Quest for Respect and the Problem of Suffering / 51 1.4 Conclusion / 61 2. In Search of Blessings: Evangelicalism, Flourishing and the Question of Respect 2.1 Introduction / 63 2.2 Situating Dell Evangelicalism / 67 2.3 ‘Making Yourself Heavy Isn’t Respectful’ - Respect Redefined / 71 2.4 ‘What’s the Point in Just Eating?’ - Respect Undermined / 82 2.5 Conclusion / 89 3. Respect’s Rival: Economic Development and the Quest for Reputation 3.1 Introduction / 92 3.2 A Question of Power? Anthropological Approaches to Development / 94 3.3 Building Name through Development / 97 3.4 Name in the Past / 105 3.5 Becoming Gamma Through Gamma Goods / 108 3.6 The Conflict between Respect and Reputation / 112 3.7 Conclusion / 120 4. Defending Respect: An Evangelical Critique of Economic Development 4.1 Introduction / 122 4.2 Evangelical Criticisms of Development / 125 4.3 Sources of Religious Commitment (1): Experiencing God’s Wrath / 131 4.4 Sources of Religious Commitment (2): Serving in Church / 135 4.5 Conquering the Spiritual Threats of Economic Life: Church Servants and Economic Withdrawal / 142 4.6 Conclusion / 146 5. From Fasting to Feasting: Reputation and Respect in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity 5.1 Introduction / 150 5.2 Historical Background / 153 5.3 For Blessings and Name: Reasons for Conversion to Orthodoxy / 155 5.4 Fasting and Feasting: The Social and Religious Life of Orthodoxy in Dell / 165 5.5 Conclusion / 175 6. Conclusion / 177 7. Bibliography / 190 Figures and Maps 1. View of Dell / 20 2. The main village / 27 3. Aari kinship terminology / 33 4. During a lineage ritual / 36 5. Reading animal intestines at a funeral / 47 6. A Sunday Service in Dell’s largest evangelical church / 67 7. A conflict resolution / 73 8. At an evangelical funeral / 86 9. Cells carrying out communal work / 95 10. During an auction / 104 11. Meeting of a rotating savings association / 118 12. A church small group harvests wheat / 126 13. A choir leader preaches at an outdoor service / 138 14. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Dell / 153 15. An Orthodox procession / 166 16. During an Orthodox feast / 172 Map 1. Southwestern Ethiopia / x Map 2. Dell and surroundings / xi A Note on Language and the Transcription of Aari’af Terms Aari’af has long borrowed from Ethiopia’s national language, Amharic, and today features many loan words. I indicate Amharic terms by underlining them when they first appear in the text and I italicize them afterwards. Aari’af terms are italicized throughout. Personal names have been anonymized. ʒ – voiced postalveolar fricative, as in the English ‘vision’ t’, ts’, ch’ – explosives s – voiceless alveolar sibilant, as in the English ‘sea’ x – voiceless velar fricative, as in the German ‘Bach’ or the Spanish ‘ojo’ z – voiced alveolar fricative, as in the English ‘zoo’ Glossary of Key Terms alem – follower of traditional practice; from Amharic ‘world’ amain – evangelical Christian; from Amharic ‘believer’ anʒe – blessing ateri – sadness bonshmi – respect, deference buts – to confess darilsi – transgression, sin karta – traditional practice Gamma – generic term for people from northern Ethiopia gabinti – ‘growth’, economic development gomma – suffering caused through a transgression manna – low-caste person miks – beg, pray nami – name, reputation negane – forgiveness toidi – lineage head xantsa – high-caste person Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the people of Dell. Thank you all for welcoming me so warmly and for your patience with my interminable questions. Berri jen immane! Joel Robbins has been a wonderful supervisor, whose astute questions and continuous encouragement have been invaluable. I cannot express what a pleasure and honour it has been to work under his guidance. Thank you also to my examiners, James Laidlaw and Naomi Haynes, whose insightful comments have been enormously stimulating. I am grateful to the many people who have taken time to discuss my work. An incomplete list includes Tom Boylston, Data D. Barata, John Dulin, Matthew Engelke, Susanne Epple, Andrea Grant, Jörg Haustein, Yanti Hölzchen, Paul Gifford, Daniel Mains, Sophia Thubauville, Baktygul Tulebaeva, Rupert Stasch, Yohannes Yitbarek, as well as the members of the Writing Up Seminar at Cambridge and colleagues at conferences in Addis Ababa, San Jose, Edinburgh, Frankfurt and at Cumberland Lodge. I am particularly grateful to Leanne Williams Green, Diego Malara and Nicholas Lackenby for reading chapters of this thesis, as well as to Dena Freeman, for commenting on my research proposal and several field reports. Special thanks are also due to Sabrina Maurus, who first introduced me to Ethiopia and, indeed, to anthropology. My research was generously funded by the German Academic Exchange Service, the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies, the University of Edinburgh Tweedie Exploration Fellowship, and the Cambridge Trust. Assistance with visa matters and research permissions was granted by the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University, Arba Minch University (especially Eshetu Ewnetu) and the South Omo Research Centre. The Frobenius Institute kindly provided access to its archives. I would like to thank all of these institutions for making my research possible. I am deeply grateful to my friends in Cambridge and Germany for their amity over the years; Charlie Chih-Hao Lee, Raymond Tangonyire and Nicholas Lackenby deserve special praise for having been excellent intellectual sparring partners. Most importantly, I would like to thank my parents, to whom this thesis is dedicated.