Preliminary Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction to a Stateless Economy
2. Land of Livestock
3. The Destruction of Rural-Urban Relations
4. Tough Choices
5. Boom Times in a Bust State
6. Life Goes On
7. Conclusions: Somalia in a Wider Context
Epilogue: In the Aftermath of September 11th
References
A close look at stateless Somalia's vibrant informal economy.
Peter D. Little is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. He is author of The Elusive Granary: Herder, Farmer, and State in Northern Kenya
Little (anthropology, Univ. of Kentucky) shows how since 1991,
Somalia has adapted to a freewheeling, stateless capitalism. As in
other collapsed African states, the borders between war and peace,
official and unofficial, and legal and illegal are fuzzy,
especially for pastoralists. Moreover, like Terrance Ranger (The
Invention of Tribalism in Zimbabwe, 1985), Little sees ethnicity
and clanism as created, manifested, combined, and reconstituted in
struggles for political and economic benefits. In the 1990s, the UN
and allied parties contributed to the proliferation of clan and
subclan by elevating their significance in allocating resources. In
some instances, to increase power disguised militia leaders or
warlords became elders and their followers clans. Little's
thorough, clearly written, and well—organized book is a treat for
scholars. His study combines an economic anthropology of Somalian
herding and trading communities; explanations of how people survive
in failed states and who wins and who loses; how people organize
their financial transactions without a central bank; the growth of
telecommunications facilities and financial stability amid a
collapsed state; how conflict contributes to the decline of major
urban areas; and how all these have been affected by the US-led war
on terror. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper—division
undergraduate through professional collections.E. W. Nafziger,
Kansas State University, Choice, may 2004
"Little's thorough, clearly written, and well-organized book is a
treat for scholars.... Highly recommended." —Choice, May 2004
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