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Full-Text Articles in African Languages and Societies
Review Of Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees And Lewiston, Maine By Catherine Besteman, Ellen Block
Review Of Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees And Lewiston, Maine By Catherine Besteman, Ellen Block
The Journal of Social Encounters
Catherine Besteman conduced fieldwork in the late 1980’s in the small village of Banta in southern Somalia. Implausibly, she was reunited with many of her former friends and interlocutors in Lewiston, Maine two decades later, laying the ground for this impressive ethnographic study. In Making Refuge, Besteman traces the experiences of Somali Bantu refugees from Somalia, through the Kenyan refugee camps, and to their resettlement in the United States. She shows how the prevailing view of refugees as “apolitical, docile, and dependent recipients” (Pg. 29), and as passive and grateful objects of humanitarian aid is both misconstrued and morally deficient. …
The Role Of The Traditional Somali Model In Peacemaking, Hudda Ibrahim
The Role Of The Traditional Somali Model In Peacemaking, Hudda Ibrahim
The Journal of Social Encounters
In this paper I explore the mediation and reconciliation efforts of traditional Somali elders. I also discuss why traditional elders have been effective peacemakers in Northern Somali (Somaliland) but not in Somalia. I argue that four factors comprising an "insider-partial mediation" approach in Somaliand helps to explain why it was effective there. In conclusion, this paper shows that the traditional Somali approach of peacemaking is a viable and effective approach to mitigating conflicts in Somalia.