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DENA FREEMAN and ALULA PANKHURST (eds), Peripheral People: the excluded minorities of Ethiopia. London: Hurst and Company (pb £20.95 - 1 85065 656 8). 2003, 400 pp.
Throughout Africa, occupational minorities have often been excluded from state building and, even more so, from social and cultural interaction within mainstream society. In Ethiopia, marginalization of minority groups of craftworkers and hunters, particularly in the south and west, has been so pervasive that it has been defined (by Donald Levine) as a 'pan-Ethiopian cultural trait'. The present collection attempts to explain why this is so and what can be done about it. By focusing on the root causes of marginalization of non-agricultural producers living mainly among farmers in the Southern Region of Ethiopia, this collection goes a long way to redressing current misconceptions about the complex interplay between social exclusion and economic and political marginalization in the country, and to suggest ways and means by which its causes and effects can be addressed.
Alula Pankhurst has undertaken extensive research in southern Ethiopia and has been a leading figure in the development of the MA programme in social anthropology at the University of Addis Ababa, where he taught for many years. Dena...