Becoming Amhara: ethnic identity change as a quest for respect in Aari, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Why do members of a southwest Ethiopian ethnic minority claim wanting to ‘stop being Aari’ and ‘become Amhara’? Since the mid-1990s, ethnic-based federalism has led many Ethiopians to identify more closely with ‘their’ ethnic group. This article presents a contrary case: building on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, I discuss Aari people’s quest to adopt the pan-Ethiopian identity of ‘Amhara’. I show that among Aari, a century of humiliation by northern Ethiopians has led to a profound sense of inferiority. The sense that all things ‘Aari’ are inferior makes it hard for people to connect to local culture and language as sources of pride and identity. In search of respect and self-esteem, Aari engage in linguistic, economic, and religious practices understood to affect ethnic identity change; by ‘becoming Amhara’ they hope to attain the recognition they were long denied. Contrary to what is widely assumed in present-day Ethiopia, this suggests that not all Ethiopians wish to make ‘their’ ethnicity the cornerstone of their identity. It also suggests that Amharization may be underway among other peripheral highlanders, sharing similar histories of humiliation and similar hopes for respect.

KEYWORDS:

• Amharization
• Christianity
• cultural change
• ethnicity
• ethnic federalism
• identity
• values

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was funded by the Cambridge Trust, the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies, and the University of Edinburgh’s Tweedie Exploration Fellowship. I gratefully acknowledge the support received from these institutions. Helpful comments on earlier versions of this article were offered by Donald Donham, Justine Owino, and Joel Robbins. I would like to thank these mentors, as well as the Aari people who graciously shared with me their thoughts and experiences.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Abbink, “Ethnic-Based Federalism and Ethnicity in Ethiopia,” 604.

2 Kefale, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Ethiopia.

3 Levine, Greater Ethiopia, 73.

4 Donham, “Old Abyssinia and the New Ethiopian Empire,” 11.

5 Ibid.

6 Pausewang, “The Two-Faced Amhara Identity,” 273.

7 Donham, “Old Abyssinia and the New Ethiopian Empire,” 34.

8 Ibid.

9 Donham, “Old Abyssinia and the New Ethiopian Empire,” 12.

10 Ibid.

11 Donham, “Old Abyssinia and the New Ethiopian Empire,” 13.

12 Levine, Greater Ethiopia, 38.

13 Ibid., 38, 130.

14 Jensen, “Die Baka,” 29.

15 Clapham, “Controlling Space in Ethiopia,” 21.

16 Ibid.

17 Abbink, “Ethnic-Based Federalism and Ethnicity in Ethiopia,” 599.

18 Clapham, “The Ethiopian Developmental State,” 4; Meles Zenawi in Vaughan, “The Addis Ababa Transitional Conference”.

19 Abbink, “Ethnic-Based Federalism and Ethnicity in Ethiopia,” 597; Etana, “The Quest for Self-Determination and the State in Ethiopia”; Asafa, “The Emergence of Oromo Nationalism and Ethiopian Reaction”.

20 Naty, Culture of Powerlessness, 238.

21 Abbink, “Ethnic-Based Federalism and Ethnicity in Ethiopia,” 603.

22 Ibid., 597.

23 For case studies see e.g. Vaughan, “Responses to Ethnic Federalism,” on Welayta; Dereje, “The Experience of Gambela Regional State” on Gambela; Smith, Making Citizens in Africa, on Oromo.

24 Assefa, “Ethnic Federalism and Its Potential to Dismember the Ethiopian State”.

25 Naty, “From Independet Chiefdoms to Abyssinian Subjects”.

26 Donham, “Old Abyssinia and the New Ethiopian Empire,” 185n2.

27 Vaughan, “Responses to Ethnic Federalism”, 193.

28 Given the politically sensitive nature of ethnicity in Ethiopia today, I should emphasize that the finding presented here relate to one Aari community, as known to me during the period of my research. I have also spoken to people from other parts of Aari, and these conversations confirmed my findings from Dell. Still, my aim is not to generalize for Aari as a whole. It is to discuss one case in depth, so as to tease out factors that may be useful for understanding other cases.

29 Abbink, “Ethnic-Based Federalism and Ethnicity in Ethiopia,” 601.

30 Gebre, “Cultural Contact and Change in Naming Practices,” 193.

31 Sommerschuh, “From Feasting to Accumulation”.

32 Prompted perhaps by observations of this kind, one reviewer asks whether Aari have multiple layers of identity. This is certainly true when we think of identity as something that is ascribed by others: sometimes a person is identified as ‘Aari’, sometimes as ‘Amhara’. It is also and obviously true that in terms of self-identity, Aari identify not just as members of an ethnic group but also as members of particular kinship groups, neighbourhoods, work groups, churches etc. However, if we focus on ethnic self-identity, as I do in this article, the notion of ‘multiple identities’ is less fitting. What currently distinguishes Aari people’s ethnic self-identification is not that they situationally switch between identifying as Aari or Amhara – as the notion of multiple identity implies – but that they consistently strive to become Amhara.

33 Sommerschuh, “Respectable Conviviality”.

34 Donham, Marxist Modern.

35 Meyer, “Make a Complete Break With the Past”.

36 Cf. Sommerschuh, “Questioning Growth”.

37 Cf. Watson, “Making a Living in the Post-Socialist Periphery”.

38 Cf. Dereje, “The Experience of Gambela Regional State,” 216; Cohen, “The Development of Regional and Local Languages”.

39 Vaughan, “Responses to Ethnic Federalism,” 193.

40 Naty, “From Independent Chiefdoms to Abyssinian Subjects”.

41 It bears saying that people continue valuing certain traditions, like offering guests generous hospitality or cultivating respectful relations among unequals. From an observer’s point of view these practices might well be classified as ‘Aari traditions’ (though of course similar practices are wide-spread in Ethiopia). The point is that Aari themselves do not frame these practices as ‘typically Aari’: the practices go unmarked and the label ‘Aari’ is reserved for allegedly negative traditions.

42 Sahlins, “The Economics of Develop-man,” 24; see also Robbins, “Humiliation and Transformation”.

43 Robbins, “Is the Trans- in Transnational the Trans- in Transcendent?”

44 The analogy is interesting also because there are reasons to believe that the division between manna and xantsa is itself a product of an earlier episode of conquest: as Jensen, “Die Baka,” 59, has argued, today’s xantsa may be descendants of a people who centuries ago conquered an autochtonous population that survived in the marginalized category of manna.

45 Bohannan, “Some Principles of Exchange and Investment Among the Tiv”.

46 E.g. Laidlaw, The Subject of Virtue, 46.

47 As one reviewer of this article suggests, the case of Gurage bears some ressemblance to the Aari case insofar as Gurage show a similar preference for Amharic and a similar interest in Orthodox Christianity (see for example Smith, Making Citizens in Africa). We would need further research in order to gauge the extent to which these engagements with Amhara language and religion are expressions of a self-conscious quest to ‘become Amhara’.

48 Salamone, “Becoming Hausa”; Schulz, “From Pagan to Pullo”; Anderson, Imagined Communities; Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism.

49 Cf. Donham, “Old Abyssinia and the New Ethiopian Empire,” 40; Haberland, Hierarchie und Kaste, 187–90.

50 Klausberger, “Königstum und Königsrecht bei den Oida”; Haberland, Hierarchie und Kaste, 219.

51 Abbink, “Ethnic-Based Federalism and Ethnicity in Ethiopia,” 597.

52 Ibid.