Book

Land tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia: the dynamics of cognatic descent

University of Chicago Press • (4) • Published In 1973 • Pages: xiv, 273

By: Hoben, Allan..

Abstract

This is a study of the relationship among descent, status and land rights in the Amhara land-tenure system. All Amhara have a right to cultivate a piece of land through their membership in a cognatic descent group whose apical ancestor was the area's first landholder. Rights are usually allotted to newly established nuclear households by the designated manager, or FEJ, of a landholding descent group segment. More powerful and prestigious persons can lay claim to large tracts of land by demonstrating their connection to an ancestor whose share had never been realized. If successful, such claims cause a reconfiguration in the reckoning of descent and land rights. Hoben argues that the structural ambiguities of the Amhara cognatic descent-based land-tenure system allowed for far more social mobility than the more stratified system of feudal Europe, with which it is compared; a 1968 Ahmara uprising against land reform supports this assertion.

HRAF PubDate

1998

Region

Africa

Sub Region

Eastern Africa

Document Type

Book

Evaluation

Creator Type

Ethnologist

Document Rating

5: Excellent Primary Data

Analyst

Ian Skoggard ; 1996

Field Date

1960-61, 1968-70

Coverage Date

1930-1970

Coverage Place

Dega Damot District, Gojjam Province, Ethiopia

Notes

Allan Hoben

Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-266)

LCCN

72097666

LCSH

Amhara (African people)