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THE APPROPRIATION OF STATE LAW IN THE PERIPHERIES CUSTOMIZED UNDERSTANDING AND USAGE OF STATE LAW AMONG THE BASHADA OF SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA [Abstract ID: 0703-10]
In the last 1-2 decades, the state has intruded the previously rather isolated south of Ethiopia in various ways, including large-scale investment and development projects, improved infrastructure, educational projects, and also a stricter enforcement of the national law. In order to understand the dynamics on the ground, which include conflicts but also cooperation between government and local population, it is important not only to understand the local culture with its customary ways of resolving disputes, but also the local understanding of what has been introduced from the outside. There have been many efforts made by the Ethiopian government and some NGOs to teach and raise awareness about the national law among the Bashada, an agropastoralist group the majority of which have not undergone formal education. However, the understanding of state law by the local population is naturally influenced by their own values and practices, and as they cannot reject it, its acceptance and application is to some extent reinterpreted and customized to the local needs and logics.
This paper looks at the efforts made by the Bashada people to appropriate the increasingly enforced national law and related legal procedures into existing local structures by analyzing how different sections of the community interpret, reject or selectively make use of the legal forum offered.