Thought Provokers
Dessalegn Rahmato on de Soto (Property Law)
A previous post covered the main arguments of Dessalegn Rahmato’s “The Peasant and the State: Studies in Agrarian Change in Ethiopia, 1950s-2000s” (2008), this highlights some interesting critiques ofDe Soto’s influential book and argument: “To begin with, by over-emphasizing the determinant role of property law and its legalization de Soto adopts a state-centric view of […]
Tags: #De Soto #Dessalegn Rahmato #Property Law #Property Rights #State
The Peasant and the State
Dessalegn Rahmato is one of Ethiopian social scientists, his ideas and publications have shifted public perceptions on issues of land and the rural smallholder farmers. This posts draws upon his work, “The Peasant and the State: Studies in Agrarian Change in Ethiopia, 1950s-2000s” (2008), which is essential reading for anyone interesting in rural Ethiopia. As […]
Tags: #Agency #Agrarian Change #Dessalegn Rahmato #Ethiopia #Governance
Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia
Bahru Zewde has written an excellent book on the history of the student movement in Ethiopia, this book goes back further, to the late 1800s and early 1900s, exploring the activities and impact of the intellectuals of that time period. The book, “Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century” […]
Tags: #Bahru Zewde #Ethiopia #History #Pioneers of change #Reformists
Peasant Households and their Resource Base
A previous post highlighted a publication from Ethiopia, which tend to be lesser known (and harder to find). This post highlights an old publication, similarly challenging to locate copies of, but may prove quite useful for those looking for historical data points for comparability: “Competition and Co-operation: North Ethiopian Peasant Households and their Resource Base” […]
Hunting Causes and Using Them
We frequently read and use claims based on claims of causation. Yet, infrequently do we explore if the claims are well founded, or if the methods are well suited to the claims being made. Nancy Cartwright’s “Hunting Causes and Using Them: Approaches in Philosophy and Economics” (2007) is a valuable resource to better engage with […]
Tags: #Causation #Correlation #Hunting causes and using them #Methods #Statistics
Blueprint for Revolution
Want to know how to use rice pudding, lego men, and other non-violent techniques to galvanize communities, overthrow dictators, or simply change the world? If so, that is the sub-title or Popovic’s “Blueprint for Revolution” (2015). For those familiar with this literature, many of Popovic’s tactics are of the Alinsky type. The book provides a […]
Tags: #Blueprint for revolution #Non-violence #Popovic #Protest #Revolution
Civil Society and the Aid Industry
Civil society is said to provide “the agents of change that will cure a range of social and economic ills left by failures of government and the marketplace: autocracy, poverty, disenfranchisement, oppression, social malaise. Cornucopian expectations for social change have been heaped on this idea and, indeed, for some Northern donors in particular (both official […]
The Ethiopian Borderlands
Historians of Ethiopia have rich sets of materials to work with from the empires of the highlands, however the relative abundance of literature from the highlands results in comparatively limited literature on the the other areas (that would become part) of Ethiopia. Pankhurst writes: “Historical studies of Ethiopia, like those of other countries, often tend […]
No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky
Decolonization struggles against the Portuguese are often thought about as Angola and Mozambique, far less does one hear about Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Basil Davidson brings first-hand experience of that struggle, for which he was praised by none other than Amilcar Cabral himself in the Preface. The book, “No Fist is Big Enough to Hide […]
Tags: #Basil Davidson #Cape Verde #decolonization #Guinea-Bissau #Liberation
Rules for Revolutionaries
Want a post-internet, post-elitist update to Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals“? Here it is: “Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything” (2016) by Becky Bond and Zack Exley. The book is about ‘big organizing’ which the authors say “isn’t just about the effective use of the newest technology to scale participation in politics. As […]
Tags: #Big organizing #Organizing #Radical trust #Revolution #Rules for Revolutionaries
About me
Logan Cochrane
Logan is a Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last twenty years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
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