Territorializing ethnicity: the imposition of a model of statehood on pastoralists in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia

Abstract

The idea of the nation state has penetrated Kenya and Ethiopia deeply at a level much below the ‘nation’ state. In the colonial period districts and grazing reserves were delineated according to perceived ‘tribal’ boundaries, which were often only created in the process. Ethnicity in that process was not invented (as has been claimed for other parts of Africa) but it has changed: it has acquired a territorial character of a new kind. Ethnic territoriality in the mind of policy makers combined with ideas of preservation of the range which modern range ecology would regard as misconceived. These ideas led to policies that restricted the range of movement of pastoral nomads. This paper draws a line from colonial policies to modern politics, in which territorial subdivision continues. This process seems to be guided the interests of self-styled elites, while the pastoralists are adversely affected by them.

Keywords:

• Nomadism
• colonialism
• territoriality
• nation state
• electoral districts
• range ecology

Acknowledgements

A version of this paper has been presented at the 16th IUAES (International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences) World Congress in Kunming China, 2009 (workshop of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples). The present version has profited from comments by Fekadu Adugna, Kirill Istomin, the participants of the African Studies Workshop at the University of Chicago, and John Galaty's doctoral students at McGill University, Montreal.

Notes

1. The older sources will not be discussed fully. Rather, I revisit some of my own earlier writing and other secondary sources. Much personal experience is also subjected to this process of renewed reflection. It is therefore difficult to point to a specific research project as the basis of my data. Over the decades I have done, for months or years at a time, purely academic as well as applied research, which has been generously funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Gesellschaft für technische Zusammenarbeit (GtZ) and the Max Planck Society.

2. These terms reflect the different terminological fashions and different periods of writing rather than different realities on the ground. Often ‘tribes’ have been renamed ‘ethnic groups’ or more recently ‘communities’ in order to avoid real or perceived pejorative undertones.

3. This, of course, requires some qualifications. The Ajuran were originally classified by the British as Oromo (then ‘Galla’) and later as Somali (Schlee 1989a, 2007). A group called Gelible for a long time had an unclear affiliation, at times to the Degodia, at times to the Ajuran (Schlee 1989a). In post-colonial times, the Sakuye have largely disappeared and reappeared in the national census, reflecting their relationship to the Boran, of whom they at times claimed to be a part or at other times from whom they claimed to differ. Still, these twentieth century changes are negligible in comparison to the changes caused by the Oromo expansion in the sixteenth century.

4. For fuller accounts see Schlee (1989a), Hassen (1994) and Aregay (1971).

5. This is in contrast to other areas of Kenya. The ‘Kalenjin’ are known to have emerged only in colonial times as a combination of linguistically related groups and have been tied together by national electoral politics since then (van Nahl 1999), and the ‘Bantu of North Kavirondo’ (Wagner 1949) have evolved into the Luhya. There is no need to mention Ethiopia as another contrast. There, in response to a national policy favouring ethnic groups, new ethnic groups and subgroups form and campaign for recognition continuously.

6. Some authors (e.g. Kassam 2006) have taken the term ‘hegemony’ to imply an accusation against the Boran and have regarded it as offensive. I have quite deliberately chosen this term rather than domination or colonialism, because it implies a superior status among others who, to some extent, are equals and situationally regarded as such and it is not based on direct administration or the constant use of violence. I still find it quite appropriate to describe the relationship between the Boran and their allies, implying neither too much nor too little inequality (cf. Schlee 2008b).

7. For examples of stereotypes about pastoralists, see Schlee (1989b, 2005).

8. The term ‘nation building’ to denote a political programme makes clear that there was no nation when Kenya was founded as an independent state. While national emancipation in Europe (as in the formation of new states after World War I in accordance with Wilson's Fourteen Points) assumed the existence of nations prior to the time when they achieved statehood of their own, Kenya at independence had the shell of a ‘nation state’ yet to be filled with a ‘nation’, a process some people are still waiting to occur.

9. Amharic for ‘bandit’.

10. For a fuller discussion, see Schlee (2010).

11. DCs are appointed by the central government and come from all over the country. The ethnic group of the incumbent president has always been over-represented among them.

12. ‘Urban’ is here used in a relative sense. The ‘towns’ of northern Kenya are often of the size that villages are elsewhere.

13. He now enjoys the hospitality of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

14. Few observers would advise any group to actually attempt it.