Forthcoming article on the impacts of displacement and resettlement in the Lower Omo Valley
They are now about to present the first results of this work in an article entitled Do our bodies know their ways?:Villagization, food insecurity and ill-being in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley. The article has been accepted for publication in the African Studies Review and is made available here, in pre-publication form, with the permission of the editors.
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates food security in the context of development-forced displacement. In southwest Ethiopia a large hydro-electric dam and plantation schemes have forced people to cede communal lands to the state and business speculators and indigenous communities have been targeted for resettlement in noe, consolidated villages. We carried out a food access survey in new villages and communities not yet subjected to villagization; we complement this with ethnographic research. Survey data suggest that household food insecurity was high in both places, but lower in villagization sites than in communities not subjected to villagization. Ethnography paints a very different picture. Settlers were unable to feed themselves, and depended on food aid. The salient features of villagization were heat, indignity and bodily discomfort. We discuss the contrast between the information generated by the different research methods, and ask how surveys might mistake the precarious state in which the settlers found themselves for the stable and continuing state implied by food security. We highlight the potential of survey research to mislead and stress the importance of taking local context into account. The impacts of villagization in the Lower Omo cannot be understood apart from wider forces that are changing both the way people live and the landscape around them.
