Research Theme for the G-COE Program: NISHI, Makoto
Content of studies conducted so far
Based on my fieldwork in Ethiopia, I have been studying the relationship between the formation of ethnicity and the state system and have conducted studies concerning the activities of resident organizations in that country.
As a study concerning the activities of resident organizations, I took up the case of the Gurage Roads Construction Organization in Ethiopia and conducted a critical examination of the debate concerning social development in modern Africa. In traditional development studies, there has been a debate between those who see democratic practice as realized through the method of so-called resident participation and opponents who see the discourse of “participation” as just a means to force the will of the government and aid organizations upon the residents. Both of these positions, however, are based on the premise that the government and aid organizations are the principal actors of development. In opposition to this, partly based on Nancy Fraser’s theory of counter public sphere and other theories, I have tried to present the possibility of the public acting as a counter to social exclusion and repression, by looking at the development practice led by local residents in Ethiopia.
The Gurage Roads Construction Organization is a resident organization established in Ethiopia in 1962 by people relocated from villages in Gurage Province in the southern part of the country to the capital of Addis Ababa (Gurage emigrants), with the aim to build roads and schools in their home villages. At the time, villages in the southern part of Ethiopia were subject to an exploitative system of large land holdings connected with the aristocracy. The aristocrats, who were mainly from the northern part of the country, occupied high positions in the central and local governments. On the other hand, many farmers in Gurage Province were landless tenant farmers. Under this situation, the activities of the Gurage Roads Construction Organization can be understood as an early attempt to form a system of redistribution from cities to rural villages.
A peculiar feature of the organization is the cooperation carried out with the funeral mutual aid association. Funeral associations are the most popular form of resident organization in Ethiopia, which were originally set up for the mutual provision of money and labor necessary for funerals. The immigrants from Gurage living in cities also formed their own funeral associations, which have a clear membership and a system to collect membership fees. Through cooperation with the funeral associations organized by Gurage immigrants, the Gurage Roads Construction Organization acquired the means to obtain support for its activities from a wide range of residents and regularly collect funds for its activities.
The case of the Gurage Roads Construction Organization shows that the activities of resident organizations can create a counter social relationship under a social system (the Ethiopian aristocracy in the 1960s) where the interests of some groups were structural excluded in order to allow a specific group to obtain benefits. Its activities can be seen as achieving broad support and sustainability by being connected with the local knowledge rooted in people’s lives, as can be seen in its cooperation with funeral associations.
Future studies
Within the framework of the GCOE program, I hope to contribute to the formation of studies on the sustainable humanosphere paradigm centering around the area of “studies on local knowledge and indigenous wisdom.” My task from now on will be to discuss the process of how people living in a local community, while attempting to respond to risks such as infectious diseases that threaten their humanosphere, reconstruct the local knowledge and create new social relationships.
Concretely, I plan to investigate the issue of HIV/AIDS. In Africa, HIV/AIDS is considered as a serious risk to the sustainability of local communities. While viruses that cause infection have to be stopped from spreading through proper preventive measures, such actions can lead to social exclusion of people who are infected (people living with viruses). For those who are infected, this difference in position compared to the non-infected becomes a risk to their own lives.
In this study, by analyzing the activities of conventional political organizations and resident organizations in Gurage Province, Ethiopia, I will plan to investigate, in relation to the risk of infectious disease that threatens the sustainability of the social life of the local community, how residents themselves, those directly concerned, interpret such social risks. At the same time, I plan to elucidate the type of communication channel that they are using to overcome the conflicts and frictions that arise between infected and non-infected people and construct a durable social relationship where they can coexist at the local community level. More concretely, I plan to investigate the activities of resident organizations that prompt solidarity between the infected and non-infected, as well as cases where care for the infected is being carried out based on local customary law.
Photograph: Road constructed with funding from the Gurage Roads Construction Organization