Marxist modern : an ethnographic history of the Ethiopian revolution

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Title:

Author:

Donham, Donald L. (Donald Lewis)

ISBN:

9780520213289

9780520213296

9780852552698

9780852552643

Personal Author:

Donham, Donald L. (Donald Lewis)

Publication Information:

Berkeley : University of California Press ; Oxford [England] : J. Currey, c1999.

Physical Description:

xxvi, 236 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Contents:

Orientations: On Jazz, Modernity, and Ethnographic History -- Introduction: Genealogies of the Modern and the Anti-Modern -- 1. The Metanarrative of Modernity in Ethiopia: 1974 -- 2. Revolution within a Revolution: Divine Kings and Zemecha Students in Maale -- 3. Revolution as a Return to Tradition in Maale -- 4. The Dialectic of Modernity in a North American Christian Mission -- 5. The Cultural Construction of Conversion in Maale -- 6. Marxist Modernism at the Ethiopian Center: Cold War Deterritorializations -- 7. The Revolutionary State at the Grass Roots: Modernist Institutions in Maale during the 1980s.

Subject Term:

Communism -- Ethiopia -- Gamo Gofa Kifle Håger -- History -- 20th century.

Christianity and politics -- Ethiopia -- Gamo Gofa Kifle Håger -- Evangelicalism -- History -- 20th century.

Male (African people) -- Politics and government.

Male (African people) -- Cultural assimilation.

Male (African people) -- Religion.

Communism -- Ethiopia -- History -- 20th century.

Geographic Term:

Gamo Gofa Kifle Håger (Ethiopia) -- Politics and government.

Gamo Gofa Kifle Håger (Ethiopia) -- Religion.

Ethiopia -- Politics and government -- 1974-1991.

Electronic Access:

Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/ucal042/98043144.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015747062	963.05 D682M 1999	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Modernity has become a keyword in a number of recent intellectual discussions. In this book, Donald L. Donham shows that similar debates have long occurred, particularly among peoples located on the margins of world power and wealth. Based on extensive fieldwork in Ethiopia--conducted over a twenty-year period-- Marxist Modern provides a cultural history of the Ethiopian revolution that highlights the role of modernist ideas.

Moving between the capital, Addis Ababa, and Maale, the home of a small ethnic group in the south, Donham constructs a narrative of upheaval and change, presenting local people's understandings of events, as these echoed with and appropriated stories of other world revolutions. With the help of poststructuralist insights and theories of narrative, Donham locates a recurrent dialectic between modernist Marxism, local Maale traditionalisms, and antimodernist, evangelical Christianity. One of the most consequential outcomes of this interaction--until the late 1980s--was the creation of a more powerful state, one that penetrated peasant communities ever more deeply and pervasively.

Combining sophisticated theory with fascinating ethnographic detail, this study contributes to the theory of revolution as well as the study of modernity. In doing so, it seeks to integrate ethnography and history in a new way.