Value-dense indexes and the escalation of a Muslim–Christian conflict

ABSTRACT

This article discusses an episode of open antagonism and violence that erupted between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in Gondar Ethiopia in 2009. In Gondar, a perceived symbolic attack on the Ark, a holy object with the qualities of the Ark of the Covenant, created an intersubjectively legible and affectively resonant impetus for escalating action. Conventions of Muslim–Christian coexistence appeared to be overturned, resulting in an alternative social (dis)order of open antagonism. I argue that a focus on values, in many cases, can sharpen our understanding of how quantitative change transforms into qualitative change, because such a focus trains our attention on continuous, and changing, fields of affective and conceptual import that frame collective action. Not that values determine action, or that escalations are predictable, but that novel articulations between different values that create new imaginative horizons of action that change the grounds of change. In such periods of escalation, novel courses of action can be framed within, and justified by, conservative value structures. The value relevance of some escalations enables these events to have a lasting, transformative impact.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethiopia
• Muslim–Christian relations
• value
• Orthodox Christianity
• Islam

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Rupert Stasch, Donald Donham and Suzanne Brenner who commented on an early version of this paper. Special thanks is due to Joel Robbins who commented on both early and later drafts. I also owe a debt to attendees of the two escalations workshop who made comments that influenced the development of the article, including Helene Risør, Lars Højer, David Henig, Anja Kublitz, Patricia Spyer, Andrea Bandak, and Ghassan-Hage, who have all made comments that inspired changes and improvements of the manuscript. This would also not have been possible without the help of research assistants and interlocutors in Gondar, who I will not name to preserve their anonymity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Amharic, residents of Gondar are referred to as Gondaré in both plural and the singular designations. In this article, I have tried to stay close to the vernacular, but I add an S when referring to Gondaré people in the plural to avoid confusion. Generally, I use Hoben's system of Amharic to English transliteration (1973, xi).

2 Most of the oral histories were gathered through formal, audio-recorded interviews between 2013 and 2015. These interviews were transcribed in Amharic and translated into English. A few other accounts emerged in casual conversations during participant observation, and were recorded in fieldnotes. In addition, the North Gondar police department (NGPD) provided photocopies of stamped, hand-written police records from their files to a member of my research team. These records were typed in Amharic and translated into English.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation; Fulbright-Hays.