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)