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Reading Ethiopia (Books)

Suggested reading on Ethiopia. Feel free to send me your additions and I’ll add them to the list.   In chronological order: The Ethiopia Books of Travels (1904, translated in 2021) Pasha Ex-Italian Somaliland (1951) S Pankhurst Ethiopia: A Cultural History (1955) S Pankhurst Indo-Ethiopian Relations for Centuries (1961) Muthanna The Blue Nile (1962) Moorehead Wichale XVII: The […]

Tags: #Books #Ethiopia #Suggested Reading

Featured Articles
Social Life of Disease – Smallpox

Social Life of Disease – Smallpox

Pox: An American History (2011) by Willrich provides a wealth of interesting examples of the intersections between public health, epidemiology, society, culture and politics. The context: “All told, during the five-year wave of epidemics around the turn of the century, the federal service counted 164,283 American cases of smallpox. The actual number of cases may […]

Tags: #Smallpox #Social life of disease

Thought Provokers
The Rational Peasant (1979) Popkin

The Rational Peasant (1979) Popkin

Popkin’s book offers ideas that, at least at times, directly confront those of James C. Scott (see quotes from one of his works here). This post continues the ‘thought provokers’ series of posts from The Rational Peasant (1979). On assumptions of peasant life: “Some representations of preindustrial society idealize life in peasant villages. These romantic […]

Tags: #Agency #Moral Economics #Myth of the Village #Peasant Studies #Political Economics

Thought Provokers

New Publication in Forum for Development Studies

Cochrane, L. and Skjerdal, T. (2015) Reading the Narratives: Resettlement, Investment and Development in Ethiopia. Forum for Development Studies. DOI: 10.1080/08039410.2015.1080183 Abstract: This article examines the narratives presented on the subjects of relocation, investment and development in Ethiopia. In particular, we focus upon representations given by the Government of Ethiopia and Human Rights Watch (HRW) […]

Tags: #Development #Ethiopia #Human Rights #Investment #Resettlement

Research
The Will to Improve (2007) Li

The Will to Improve (2007) Li

For anyone interested in international development, this is essential reading. The opening chapters of the book are academic, and I suspect this has contributed to it mostly being engaged with by academics. However, Li’s book is highly recommended for practitioners, even if that means skimming some parts. What follows is not a summary of The […]

Tags: #Complexity #Ethnography #Practice of Development #Rendering Technical #The Will to Improve

Thought Provokers

Selected Jobs (5 Sept 2015)

Volunteer Post – Evaluation (Bolivia) Volunteer Post – Mapping (Burkina Faso) Volunteer Post – M&E (Ghana) Program Coordinator – Health (Afghanistan) External Evaluator (Lebanon) WASH Manager (Ethiopia)

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