Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Land Tenure and Conflict Dynamics in Pastoral Areas of Southern Ethiopia

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African pastoralism today is undergoing a series of important social changes that often result from new land and market-related policies. This study examines how centralized state policy interventions affect the pastoral livelihood of the Guji-Oromo of southern Ethiopia, by focusing on policy interventions, local land tenure systems, and resource-based conflicts between and within communities. Combinations of different qualitative and quantitative methods will be employed to enable a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of policy impacts on livelihood strategies, land tenure systems, and conflicts in the region. The project will contribute to understandings of how conflicts are resolved in diverse cultural settings and will have a broader application to policies related to conflict prevention within and between communities. It will also address growing concerns among international bodies (including the US government) and policy makers regarding chronic poverty in Africa and its relationship to civil war. The research outputs will have strong applications for understanding the causes of conflict in impoverished communities and how they might be prevented through improved development policies and programs. By understanding how local resource access strategies and rules interact with broader power structures in the form of policy interventions, the study will point to possible avenues of conflict prevention.