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Warfare, Vulnerability and Survival: A Case from Southwestern Ethiopia
Author(s) -
TURTON DAVID
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
disasters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.744
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-7717
pISSN - 0361-3666
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7717.1991.tb00459.x
Subject(s) - famine , context (archaeology) , vulnerability (computing) , politics , geography , materialism , poison control , face (sociological concept) , socioeconomics , history , economy , political science , sociology , computer security , archaeology , law , environmental health , medicine , economics , social science , philosophy , epistemology , computer science
The Mursi are a small group of herders and cultivators living in the Lower Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia. Over the past 20 years they have suffered a disaster of classic proportions, involving drought, famine, migration and war. Measures taken to ensure the physical survival of people, and especially cattle, in the face of regular and expected attacks by their neighbours have made the economy of the Mursi more vulnerable to climatic uncertainty. A crude materialist explanation of warfare is not, therefore, supported by this case but it is clear also that warfare has played a key part in Mursi expansion northwards, over the past century, into the territory of the Bodi. Warfare, in this context, is a means of establishing and maintaining the separate political identities of neighbouring groups. The problem of survival does not present itself to the Mursi and their neighbours as a choice between political and physical survival: the only way they know of saving lives is to save their way of life.