Peripheral People

In southern Ethiopia there are craft-workers and hunters who are vigorously excluded from mainstream society. As blacksmiths, potters, tanners, woodworkers, weavers and hunters of wild animals, they fulfil important roles in society, yet many of them are considered by local people to be not "real people". They are feared as purveyors of evil and supernatural powers, or despised as outcasts, and face discrimination across the whole social, political and economic spectrum. The marginalization of these groups is not new or localized, and occurs in both the towns and the countryside, in Ethiopia and across Africa. This volume has three main aims. Firstly, it provides a history and ethnography of these groups. With comparative data about 14 different ethnic groups in southern Ethiopia, it offers information about the lives of the people who "live on the edge". Secondly, it offers an understanding of these groups and the marginalization they face. It shatters some of the myths about them that have dominated scholarly approaches, and provides a framework for understanding occupational marginalization in Ethiopia and Africa generally. Lastly, it considers how the plight of marginalized groups might be alleviated, both by their own efforts and by the intervention of governments and NGOs.