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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Indigenous Peoples And The Capitalist World System: Researching, Knowing, And Promoting Social Justice, Asafa Jalata
Indigenous Peoples And The Capitalist World System: Researching, Knowing, And Promoting Social Justice, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This paper explores the major consequences of the expansion of the European-dominated capitalist world system, colonial terrorism, and continued subjugation for indigenous Americans, Australians, and Afri- cans between the late fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Western powers as well as most of the descen- dants of European colonialists in Europe, the Americas, Australia, and in Africa and their regional and local collaborators deny or forget or minimize the crimes committed against indigenous peoples and claim that their ancestors spread modernity and civilization around the world.
Copyright ©2013, American Sociological Association, Volume Xix, Number 1, Pages 130 - 152, Issn 1076 - 156x The Impacts Of Terrorism And Capitalist Incorporation On Indigenous Americans, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This article demonstrates the connections between terrorism, colonial state formation, and the development of the capitalist world system, or globalization, exploring the consequences of colonial terrorism on indigenous American peoples. First, the piece introduces the central argument and conceptualizes and theorizes terrorism. Second, it examines the structural aspects of colonial terrorism by connecting it to specific colonial policies and practices. Third, it explains the ideological justifications that Euro-American colonial settlers and their descendants used in committing crimes against humanity and dispossessing the homelands of indigenous Americans, as well as in amassing wealth/capital by ignoring moral, ethical, and philosophical issues and …
Colonial Terrorism, Global Capitalism And African Underdevelopment: 500 Years Of Crimes Against African Peoples, Asafa Jalata
Colonial Terrorism, Global Capitalism And African Underdevelopment: 500 Years Of Crimes Against African Peoples, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This article critically explores the essence and characters of European colonial terrorism and its main consequences on various African peoples during racial slavery, colonization, and incorporation into the European-dominated capitalist world system between the late fifteenth and twentieth centuries. It employs multidimensional, comparative methods, and critical approaches to explain the dynamic interplay among social structures, human agency, and terrorism to critically explain the connections among all forms of violence, the emergence of globalization, and African underdevelopment. The piece focuses on four central issues: First, it conceptualizes and theorizes terrorism to clarify its roles in creating and maintaining the global system. …
Gadaa (Oromo Democracy): An Example Of Classical African Civilization, Asafa Jalata
Gadaa (Oromo Democracy): An Example Of Classical African Civilization, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
The paper briefly introduces and explains the essence of indigenous Oromo democracy and its main characteristics that are relevant for the current condition of Africa in general and Oromo society in particular. It also illustrates how Oromo democracy had functioned as a socio-political institution by preventing oppression and exploitation and by promoting relative peace, security, sustainable development, and political sovereignty, and how the gadaa system organized Oromo society around economic, cultural and religious institutions. Finally, the paper explores how the Oromo movement for national self-determination and multinational democracy struggles to revive and revitalize the Oromo democratic tradition.
The Oromo In Exile: Creating Knowledge And Promoting Social Justice, Asafa Jalata
The Oromo In Exile: Creating Knowledge And Promoting Social Justice, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This paper explains how some Oromos who were forced to leave their country, Oromia, by successive colonial Ethiopian governments and live in exile have been orga- nized in foreign lands to liberate their people and country by supporting the Oromo national movement. By demonstrating how global and regional forces have collaborated in the colonization, continued subjugation and dehumanization of the Oromo people, the paper illustrates how the Oromo people have lost their cultural, political, and social rights that are enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of human rights and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and how they are still facing …
Imperfections In U. S. Foreign Policy Toward Oromia And Ethiopia: Will The Obama Administration Introduce Change?, Asafa Jalata
Imperfections In U. S. Foreign Policy Toward Oromia And Ethiopia: Will The Obama Administration Introduce Change?, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This paper argues that because of its perceived strategic national interest and the wrong advice it received from experts and racist assumptions about the Oromo, the U.S. government has allied with the Tigrayan minority elites to form a colonial government and to suppress the Oromo national movement. Thus, the major question becomes will the Obama administration respect the rights of African peoples in general and that of the Oromo in particular?
Terrorism From Above And Below In The Age Of Globalization, Asafa Jalata
Terrorism From Above And Below In The Age Of Globalization, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This paper explains how the intensification of globalization as the modern world system has increased the oc- currence of terrorism from above (i.e. state actors) and from below (i.e. non-state actors). We cannot adequately grasp the essence and characteristics of modern terrorism without understanding the larger cultural, social, eco- nomic, and political contexts in which it takes place. Since terrorism has been conceptualized, defined, and theo- rized by those who have contradictory interests and objectives and since the subject matter of terrorism is com- plex, difficult, and elusive, there is a wide gap in establishing a common understanding among the …
The Ethiopian State: Authoritarianism, Violence And Clandestine Genocide, Asafa Jalata
The Ethiopian State: Authoritarianism, Violence And Clandestine Genocide, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
“Modern” Ethiopia has been created and maintained through the achievement of external legitimacy. As the European colonial powers such as Great Britain, France, and Italy enabled the Abyssinian (Amhara-Tigray) warlords to create the modern Ethiopian Empire during the last decades of the nineteenth century, successive hegemonic world powers, namely England, the former USSR, and the United States, has maintained the existence of various Ethiopian government until now. At the same time, the successive Amhara-Tigray regimes have failed to achieve internal legitimacy among the more colonized peoples while maintaining some degree of legitimacy among the minority Abyssinian population. While authoritarian rule …
Urban Centers In Oromia: Consequences Of Spatial Concentration Of Power In Multinational Ethiopia, Asafa Jalata
Urban Centers In Oromia: Consequences Of Spatial Concentration Of Power In Multinational Ethiopia, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This paper examines the essence and characteristics of cities and urban centers in Oromia and the major consequences of the centralization and spatial concentration of Habasha (Amhara-Tigray) political power in a multinational Ethiopia. It speci!cally demonstrates how the integration of indigenous Oromo towns into the Ethiopian colonial structure and the formation of garrison and non-garrison cities and towns in Oromia consolidated Habasha political domination over the Oromo people. Ethiopian colonial structure limited the access of Oromo urban residents, who are a minority in their own cities and towns, to institutions and opportunities, such as employment, education, health, mass media and …
Struggling For Social Justice In The Capitalist World System: The Cases Of African Americans, Oromos, And Southern And Western Sudanese, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This article identifies and examines the processes through which the social justice movements of African Americans in the US, Oromos in Ethiopia, and Southern and Western Sudanese in Sudan emerged, and the successes and failures of these movements in a global and comparative perspective. It specifically explores four interrelated issues. First, the paper deals with some theoretical and methodological insights. Second, the piece explains how the racialized capitalist world system and its political structures facilitated the creation of the states of the US, Ethiopia, and Sudan and legalized racial/ethnonational oppression, colonialism, exploitation, and continued subjugation. Third, it explains comparatively the …
State Terrorism And Globalization: The Cases Of Ethiopia And Sudan, Asafa Jalata
State Terrorism And Globalization: The Cases Of Ethiopia And Sudan, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This article compares the essence and effects of Ethiopian and Sudanese state terrorism by focusing on the commonalities between the two states. These peripheral African states have used global and regional connections and state terrorism as political tools for creating and maintaining the confluence of identity, religion, and political power. Ethiopia primarily depends on the West, and Sudan on the Middle East, since Christianity and Islam are the dominant religions in these African states respectively. While the Ethiopian state was formed by the alliance of Abyssinian (Amhara-Tigray) colonialism and European imperialism, the Sudanese state was created by British colonialism known …
Comparing The African American And The Oromo Movements In The Global Context, Asafa Jalata
Comparing The African American And The Oromo Movements In The Global Context, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
The African American and Oromo movements have been anti-colonial struggles, and they have aimed to dismantle racial/ethnonational hierarchies legitimated by the ideology of racism in the hegemonic state of the United States and the peripheral and imperial state of Ethiopia.
The Place Of The Oromo Diaspora In The Oromo National Movement: Lessons From The Agency Of The "Old" African Diaspora In The United States, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
Just as European and African slave traders merchandised Africans and created the old African diaspora, successive colonial and authoritarian regimes2 of Ethiopia forced some Oromos out of their homeland, Oromia, and caused them to settle in the West. The displaced Oromo entered the United States as one of the "new" African diaspora groups four centuries after the old African diaspora began to be created. In the process, the Oromo diaspora emerged on the world stage. Whereas the old African diaspora lived under racial slavery and segregation for almost three centuries, the new African diaspora communities such as the Oromo came …
Sociocultural Origins Of The Oromo National Movement In Ethiopia, Asafa Jalata
Sociocultural Origins Of The Oromo National Movement In Ethiopia, Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata
This paper examines social and cultural factors that have necessitated the emergence of the Oromo national movement. Since their incorporation into Ethiopia, the Oromo have lost their autonomous cultural and social development. With the help of the European colonial power, the Ethiopians effectively occupied Oromia, expropriated Oromian economic resources, established settler colonialism, and repressed Oromo culture and negated Oromo history. The colonial settlers created oppressive institutions that facilitated the extraction of Oromo produce and labor. The Oromo have become second class citizens and lost political freedom and institutional power. Recently Oromo cultural resistance has been transformed into the Oromo national …