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,...
Modernity has become a keyword in a number of recent intellectual discussions. In this book, Donald L. Donham shows that similar debates have long occ...
Is Marxism a reflection of the conceptual system it fights against, rather than a truly comprehensive approach to human history? Drawing on recent work in anthropology, history, and philosophy, Donald Donham confronts this problem in analyzing a radically different social order: the former Maale kingdom of southern Ethiopia. "Every once in a while there appears a book that . . . opens up new ways of inquiring into the ways of the world. Donald Donham has written such a book. The style is quiet and judicious, but the effect is stunning. . . . In putting inherited partisan approaches to the...
Is Marxism a reflection of the conceptual system it fights against, rather than a truly comprehensive approach to human history? Drawing on recent wor...
"By focusing on the participation and consequences for ordinary people, this collection offers a fresh perspective on the eruption of violence in sub-Saharan Africa. None of the contributions takes the easy way out--either by claiming any special propensity of Africans to violence, or by calling attention to titillating aspects of the violence itself. Rather, they offer 'thick descriptions' of particular violent episodes to develop their contexts and the larger causes that made them happen. The case studies, drawn from field research in Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South...
"By focusing on the participation and consequences for ordinary people, this collection offers a fresh perspective on the eruption of violence in s...
Modernity has become a keyword in a number of intellectual debates: in marginal areas of the world as much as its centres of power and wealth. Investigating Ethiopia during the 1974 revolution, Donald Donham constructs a narrative of upheaval and change, presenting locals' views on the events. North America: University of California Press
Modernity has become a keyword in a number of intellectual debates: in marginal areas of the world as much as its centres of power and wealth. Investi...
This pioneering book, first published to wide acclaim in 1986, traces the way the Ethiopian center and the peripheral regions of the country affected each other. It looks specifically at the expansion of the highland Ethiopian state into the western and southern lowlands from the 1890s up to 1974.
This pioneering book, first published to wide acclaim in 1986, traces the way the Ethiopian center and the peripheral regions of the country affected ...
How can we account for the apparent increase in ethnic violence across the globe? Donald L. Donham develops a methodology for understanding violence that shows why this question needs to be recast. He examines an incident that occurred at a South African gold mine at the moment of the 1994 elections that brought apartheid to a close. Black workers ganged up on the Zulus among them, killing two and injuring many more. While nearly everyone came to characterize the conflict as "ethnic," Donham argues that heightened ethnic identity was more an outcome of the violence than its cause. Based on...
How can we account for the apparent increase in ethnic violence across the globe? Donald L. Donham develops a methodology for understanding violence t...
