From Pre-Colonial Past to the Post-Colonial Present: The Contemporary Clan-Based Configurations of Statebuilding in Somalia

Ingiriis, Mohamed Haji

doi:10.1017/asr.2017.144

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…The international intervention in Somalia has systematically failed to create a Weberian central state in Mogadishu (Hagmann, 2016; Ingiriis, 2018). Instead, order in the city emerges from a ‘political marketplace’ (Ingiriis, 2020), a modern system of governance characterized by a monetized transactional politics, in which loyalties are bought and sold by ‘political entrepreneurs’ engaged in pervasive rent-seeking and monetized patronage (De Waal, 2015).…”

Section: Transgressing the Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Porous bunker: Private security contractors and the plasticity of Mogadishu’s international ‘green zone’

Norman

2023

Security Dialogue

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From Baghdad’s ‘Emerald City’ to Kabul’s ‘Kabubble’, international green zones have been characterized as ‘bunkerized’ and temporary. Despite efforts to make these spaces appear sealed, they are more porous than we assume. Drawing on fieldwork in Mogadishu and research with private security contractors, this article reconceptualizes international enclaves in terms of their inherent plasticity, moulded by the mobilities, intentions and bureaucracies of those within. The article illustrates the heterogenous sociospatial relations within Mogadishu’s green zone, arguing that it is sustained through internal frictions and transgressive spatial practices that are not captured by the bunkerization motif. The limits of bunkerization are revealed most starkly through the work of security contractors who enjoy greater mobility and access to information than many of the green zone’s transient international workers. They assume the gatekeeper role, sustaining conditions of manageable insecurity by ordering the messy sociopolitical space of the city into bounded zones. Beyond the façade of the enclave, however, their mobility is reliant on ‘local’ Somali partners navigating the complexities of Mogadishu on their behalf. As an interface between the secure inside and the dangerous outside, some contractors have emerged as opportunistic power-brokers connecting Somali entrepreneurs on the outside to the resources within.

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Section: Transgressing the Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Porous bunker: Private security contractors and the plasticity of Mogadishu’s international ‘green zone’

Norman

2023

Security Dialogue

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“…Somali women's movements started in the 1940s as the country pushed for independence. During colonialism, women were an important element of various grassroots organizations and social movements, including the (“women's movement”), the Somali Youth League (SYL), and Sayyid Mohamed Abdullah Hassan's Dervish Movement (Ingiriis, 2018). Somali women under the British Military Administration joined the nationalist struggle with equal fervour in the 1940s.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of patriarchal culture on Somali women's participation in politics

Abdullahi,

Williamson,

Ahmed

2023

Development Policy Review

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MotivationSomali women's political progress has been slow. The nation's patriarchal clan traditions perpetuate gender discrimination, bestowing an absolute priority upon all men for public affairs, whereas clan women remain voiceless, voteless, and restricted to private (household) affairs.PurposeTo better understand why, despite the minimal formal constraints on women's participation in political life, informal institutions and customs determine the social, economic, and cultural constraints on women such that they are often poorly equipped and/or reluctant to engage in public political activity.Methods and approachBased on secondary literature, the article seeks to explain how the influences of the clan patriarchal system exert a negative impact on Somali women's political participation. It identifies four structural categories—cultural, social, economic, and political—by which patriarchy has persistently impeded Somali women's participation in the nation's politics.FindingsAlthough women have contested the patriarchal system in Somalia through their participation in public decision‐making processes in different sectors and their involvement in politics, including an increasingly higher level of education, and more participation in the labour force, their numbers are still insufficient compared to men's.Policy implicationsGiven that patriarchy has been identified worldwide as one of the prime obstacles to women's participation in political and socioeconomic processes, there is a need for official quotas for women's representation in politics to balance severe gender inequalities, achieve women's full realization of human rights, and influence the issues raised and how political policies are shaped. There is also a need for women's political representation to imprint their competence as decision‐makers. The article sets out recommendations for tackling the four main structural barriers to achieving this, so that women can contribute fully to the development of Somalia, on a par with men.

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“…With reference to Somalia, Mohamed Haji Ingiriis argues that 'contemporary Somalis are reverting to a pre-colonial realm where each clan had its clan sultan seeking for a clan-state of its own right'. 12 Clannishness has been called 'the categorical imperative of Somali political practice' 13 and is often described as the proverbial iceberg that sank Somalia's postcolonial state-building venture. 14 Anthropologists have critiqued the segmentary lineage paradigm as 'primordialist' and observed that genealogy functions in Somalia and elsewhere as a tool of political manipulation.…”

Section: The Outbreak Of the Civil War In Northern Ethiopia In 2020 B...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Identity as Temporal Collapse: Ethiopian Federalism and Contested Ogaden Histories

Thompson¹,

Matshanda²

2023

African Affairs

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Since the 1980s, analyses of African political identities have emphasized identity manipulation as a governance tool. In the Somali Horn of Africa, however, politicians’ efforts to reinvent identities confront rigid understandings of genealogical clanship as a key component of identity and political mobilization. This article explores how government efforts to construct a new ‘Ethiopian–Somali’ identity within Ethiopia’s ethnic-federal system are entangled with attempts to reinterpret clan genealogies and histories. We focus on efforts to revise the history of clans within the broader Ogaden Somali clan group and trace the possibilities and limits of these revisions in relation to legacies of colonialism as well as popular understandings of Ogaden identity. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research, we show that political struggles over Somalis’ integration with Ethiopia orient around Somali clanship, but that clanship is not a mechanical tool of mobilization, as it is often portrayed. We suggest that genealogical relatedness does not equate to political loyalty, but genealogical discourse provides a framework by which various actors reinterpret contemporary events by collapsing history into the present to imbue clan, ethnic, and national identities with political significance.

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From Pre-Colonial Past to the Post-Colonial Present: The Contemporary Clan-Based Configurations of Statebuilding in Somalia

Cited by 13 publications

References 59 publications

Porous bunker: Private security contractors and the plasticity of Mogadishu’s international ‘green zone’

Porous bunker: Private security contractors and the plasticity of Mogadishu’s international ‘green zone’

The impact of patriarchal culture on Somali women's participation in politics

Political Identity as Temporal Collapse: Ethiopian Federalism and Contested Ogaden Histories

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