https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8347-2972
![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
After the end of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border war (1998–2000) life resumed in Asmara, where the young generation flocked to cafés, bars and nightclubs after work or study. During my ethnographic fieldwork (2001–2005) I identified three larger social milieus that pursued and staged their own ideas of a good life: the chic, the shabby and the pious. Until the ‘political spring’ of summer 2001, young people looked forward to building up promising life careers inside the country. Eritrea needed young professionals more than ever before, and not everyone had fallen out with Eritrea’s guerrilla government. 2001s clampdown quickly changed future prospects for individuals, families and for society as a whole. In the different milieus’ meeting places, these events were well observed and cautiously discussed. Social life went on, but from now on performed visions of a good life became unreachable in real life. Migration appeared as the only answer. An existential view of selected protagonists and ethnographic sketches from the early 2000s will help to re-interpret the youth life-worlds of Asmara’s recent past in a regional history of ongoing violence.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful critiques, and to David O’Kane PhD, an Associate of the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany, for his thoughtful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Jackson, How Lifeworlds Work, x–xvi.
2 Harvey, “Uneven Geographical Development,” 82.
3 Martin Plaut, “Eritrea in the Tigray War: What We Know and Why it Might Backfire,” African Arguments, 8 January 2021. https://africanarguments.org/2021/01/eritrea-in-the-tigray-war-what-we-know-and-why-it-might-backfire/ (accessed 11 May 2021); Declan Walsh, “Eritrean Troops Continue to Commit Atrocities in Tigray, U.N. Says”, The New York Times, 15 April 2021, Page A15; Amnesty International, The Massacre in Axum, February 2021, AFR 25/3730/2021.
4 Ingold, Anthropology. Why It Matters, 22–5.
5 Taussig, I Swear I Saw This, 1–9.
6 Amit, “Introduction: Constructing the Field,” 15.
7 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), “Asmara. A Modernist African City,” World Heritage List, 2017. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1550/ (accessed 11 May 2021). See also Denison, Ren and Gebremedhin, Asmara.
8 Boness, Asmara. The Frozen City.
9 Ararat Iyob, “September in Asmara,” 41.
10 Transliteration follows the guidelines of ITYOPIS journal. http://www.ityopis.org/Guidelines.html (accessed 11 May 2021).
11 Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 132–5, 146–7.
12 Ararat Iyob, “September in Asmara,” 41.
13 Jeangene Vilmer, “Peace without Freedom in Eritrea,” 24–5.
14 Reid, Shallow Graves; Plaut, Understanding Eritrea; Tekeste Negash and Tronvoll, Brothers at War.
15 Herder, Auch eine Philosophie, 60–1; Waldenfels, Ortsverschiebungen, Zeitverschiebungen, 95–7.
16 For a broader picture on Tigrinya drama and literature, see also Matzke, “Suwa Houses”; Ghirmai Negash, History of Tigrinya Literature; Uoldelul Chelati Dirar, “Writing WWI with African Gazes”; Hopkins, “Postcolonial Utopia”.
17 Tsehaitu Beraki, “Asmara,” Album Selam, Terp Records, Compact Disc 2004.
18 Alemseged Tesfay, “Note on Aba Shawl,” 343.
19 Yemane Baria, “Deki Asmara,” Album Zemen, Habesha poetics, Compact Disc 2014.
20 Aron Abraham, Asmara Shikor, Asmara Bella, no date. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO1fhsqIiUw (accessed 11 May 2021).
21 Andit Ogbay, Asmeray, ATA Media 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNxsLdgdvM4 (accessed 11 May 2021).
22 Denison, Ren and Gebremedhin, Asmara; Tekle Woldemikael, “Under a Shadow”.
23 Bodenschatz, “Asmara and Rome”; Bader, Moderne in Afrika; Uoldelul Chelati Dirar, “Warriors to Urban Dwellers”, see also Anderson, Modern Architecture; Mattioli, “Raumordnung in Italienisch-Ostafrika”.
24 Bader, Moderne in Afrika, 45–51; Denison, Ren and Gebremedhin, Asmara, 35–42.
25 Uoldelul Chelati Dirar, “Warriors to Urban Dwellers,” 547, Denison, Ren and Gebremedhin, Asmara, 54–69.
26 Njoh, “Urban planning”, Rhodes, Building Colonialism, 111–44.
27 Amanuel Sahle, “Narrow Streets”; Uoldelul Chelati Dirar, “Warriors to Urban Dwellers,” 544.
28 Uoldelul Chelati Dirar, “Warriors to Urban Dwellers,” 548–60.
29 Jordan Gebre-Medhin, Peasants and Nationalism, 85–9.
30 Connel, Against All Odds, 9–17.
31 Bourdieu, “From Revolutionary War to Revolution,” 85-91; cf. Sartre, “Preface”, lvii.
32 Pool, From Guerilla To Government, 171.
33 Treiber, Traum vom guten Leben, 60, 223 FN 402.
34 AFP, “Eritrea mutiny over as government, opposition say ‘all calm’”, Ahramonline, Tuesday 22 January 2013. https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/63024.aspx (accessed May 2021).
“Eritrea's Asmara city hit by rare student protest”, BBC News Africa, 1 November 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41832105 (accessed 11 May 2021).
35 Sennett, Flesh and Stone, 15.
36 Foucault, “Of other spaces”.
37 Galtung, “Cultural Violence”.
38 Reid, Shallow Graves, 80.
39 Fisher and Meressa Tsehaye Gebrewahd, “Game Over”; Vilmer “Peace without Freedom in Eritrea”, 25–7.
40 Wolde-Yesus Ammar, “Asmara Students.”
41 Plaut, Understanding Eritrea, 122–31; Connell and Killion, Historical Dictionary, 397–8.
42 Bozzini, “Fines and the Spies.”
43 Pool, From Guerilla To Government, 104–6.
44 Müller, Making of Elite Women; “Aspirations among Educated Youths.”
45 Gaim Kibreab, Eritrean National Service.
46 Roitman, Anti-Crisis, 7–9.
47 Honwana, The Time of Youth; Treiber, “Trapped in Adolescence”.
48 Mannheim, “The Problem of Generations.”
49 Bourdieu, Logic of Practice, 52–65.
50 Sennett, Flesh and Stone, 15.
51 Lefebvre, “Production of Space,” 1–67; Ndi, “Metropolitanism.”
52 AMCE originally is an acronym for Automotive Manufacturing Company of Ethiopia, a bus and truck factory in Gerji/Addis Ababa, which assembled imported components from Italy. Its use, in this context, thus alludes to the contested identity of those Eritreans born and raised in Ethiopia, who are perceived as foreign both there and in Eritrea. See also Riggan, “In Between Nations.”
53 Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft, 174; Treiber, “Clean and Dirty.”
54 Zaccaria, “Racing Across Asmara.”
55 Tibebu, “Radical Politics in Ethiopia.”
56 United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (2000–2008).
57 Goffman, Self in Everyday Life.
58 Abraham was once accused of stealing from his student mates in the campus dormitory. After being accused, he distanced himself from his former friends, whom he considered a hindrance to his own life-career. He then showed up at the Mask Place – but never found lasting friends.
59 Redeker Hepner, “Religion, Repression”; Treiber, “False Messiah.”
60 EPLF, “National Democratic Programme,” see also Donham, Marxist Modern, 143.
61 Tronvoll, “Eritrean Referendum.”
62 Abebe Kifleyesus, “Cosmologies in Collision.”
63 A pseudonym chosen by the interlocuter herself.
64 Treiber, “False Messiah,” 197–8, 210.
65 It may be misleading to call these old men ‘Asmarino’. The Asmarino is more than a correctly dressed urban dweller, he is a social cliché: chic and smart, eloquent and amusing, but also tricky and mean, looking for his chance and advantage. So, it is still winkingly remembered how EPLF’s liberation fighters, who had lost their feeling for the use of money and grasp of what constituted an acceptable price during their years in the isolated Sahel region, were cheated and overcharged by local businesspeople after the liberation of 1991. Typically, the Asmarino is a male figure (Treiber, “Clean and Dirty,” 124).
66 Amanuel Sahle, “Narrow Streets.”
67 Matzke, “Suwa Houses.”
68 Kracauer, “Ornament der Masse.”
69 Belloni, The Big Gamble; Treiber, Migration aus Eritrea.
70 Jackson, Existential Anthropology, x–xii.
71 Jackson, How Lifeworlds work, x–xvi.
72 Bourdieu, Logic of Practice, 66–7.
73 See, e.g. “Missing Migrants”, IOM. https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/mediterranean (accessed 11 May 2021).
74 e.g. “Politiker streiten um Eritrea-Reise,” Tagesanzeiger, 7 February 2016. http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/schweiz/standard/Politiker-streiten-um-EritreaReise/story/29358138 (accessed 11 May 2021); see Treiber, Eritrea in Switzerland.
75 Although I do not, by any means, share her critique of the Black student movement in the 1960s US, Hannah Arendt’s comments on Sartre’s, Fanon’s and Engel’s modernist notion of violence should be taken into account; “On Violence”.
76 Sophia Tesfamariam, “Letter of Eritrea’s Ambassador to the UN to Current President of UNSC”, Ministry of Information Eritrea, 16 April 2021. https://shabait.com/2021/04/16/letter-of-eritreas-ambassador-to-the-un-to-current-president-of-unsc/ (accessed 11 May 2021).