No abstract

No abstract

Taking the Oromo as historical actors, the emergent Oromo studies identify some deficiencies of “Ethiopian studies” that primarily focus on the Amhara and Tigray ethnic groups and their rulers, and ignore the history of the Oromo people. Many Ethiopian and Ethiopianist scholars do not recognize the positive cultural achievements of this people. As Shack (1994, 642) notes, “The lack of critical scholarship has inadvertently distorted the human achievements of conquered peoples like the Oromo, including transformations of their social, cultural, and political institutions.” Although the Oromo have no political power, they are the largest ethnonation in the Ethiopian Empire, comprising about half of the 52 million Ethiopian population. Ethiopia (former Abyssinia), with the help of the European colonial powers, colonized and annexed the Oromo people during the last decades of the 19th century, when Africa was partitioned among the European colonial powers (Jalata 1995a). Since then they have been treated as colonial subjects and second-class citizens. With their colonization and incorporation into Ethiopia (Jalata 1991, 1993a; Holcomb and Ibssa 1990), the Oromo could not develop independent institutions that would allow them to produce and disseminate their historical knowledge freely. Currently, they are fighting for national self-determination: to regain their political freedom and rebuild independent institutions. The Ethiopian knowledge elites have treated the Oromo as historical objects or have ignored them because of their subordination and powerlessness. Current publications on Oromo cultural and social history challenge a top-down paradigm to historiography and make the Oromo subjects rather than objects of history. Studying people as subjects or agents helps scholars avoid producing false knowledge. As Haraway (1991, 198) expounds, “Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent, not a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as slave to the master that closes off the dialectic in his unique agency and authorship of ‘Objective’ knowledge.” The emergent Oromo studies attempt to replace colonial history by a history of liberation, and to refute historical myths that have been produced to justify Ethiopian colonialism. This essay explores how the emergent Oromo studies have identified some deficiencies of Ethiopian studies, and how many Ethiopian and Ethiopianist knowledge elites have reacted to these fields of study.

This article critically explores the essence of colonial terrorism and its consequences on the indigenous people of Australia during their colonization and incorporation into the European-dominated racialized capitalist world system in the late 18th century. It uses multidimensional, comparative methods, and critical approaches to explain the dynamic interplay among social structures, human agency, and terror to explain the connection between terrorism and the emergence of the capitalist world system or globalization. Raising complex moral, intellectual, philosophical, ethical, and political questions, this article explores the essence, roles, and impacts of colonial terrorism on the indigenous Australians. First, the article provides background historical and cultural information. Second, it conceptualizes and theorizes colonial terrorism as an integral part of the capitalist world system. Specifically, it links capitalist incorporation and colonialism and various forms of violence to terrorism. Third, the article examines the structural aspects of colonial terrorism by connecting it to some specific colonial policies and practices. Finally, it identifies and explains different kinds of ideological justifications that the English colonial settlers and their descendants used in committing crimes against humanity.

ABSTRACT