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Tradition and religions have coexisted and merged in Eritrea since time immemorial, and sometimes it is dif¤cult to understand whether a certain rule has a traditional or religious origin. It is easier to isolate the origin of state and international rules because they are more recent and because we have written documents to consult. Moreover, whenever elements of the state system have been imported into Eritrea, they have interacted with previous layers in a circular process. Identifying Ethnies . . . The ¤rst actors we examine are the groups producing traditional law. We are aware that both terms—“traditional” and “customary” law— have been criticized, the ¤rst because of its imprecision and the second because of the colonial implications.2 A clari¤cation is needed: throughout this book we use, for the sake of simplicity, the words “traditional” and “customary” law synonymously. Some authors have distinguished between customary law, which refers to the law that was applied in local or “native” courts in the colonial period, and traditional law, which is the law that been evolving in pre-colonial societies for many hundreds of years. Customary law used in native courts derived in some degree from traditional law, but it was often an emasculated or greatly simpli ¤ed version of traditional law; it represented the law that the colonial government could tolerate or allow space for.3 Indeed, the concept of the invention of tradition has been at the center of debates since the 1970s.4 And an appeal to tradition has often been the only way to legitimize a 14 Two From Tradition to Globalization How can we understand each other, sir, when in the words that I say I put the meaning and the value of things that are inside myself; while the one who listens to them, inevitably confers on them the meaning and value that they have according to him, that of the world how it is inside him? —Luigi Pirandello1 modi¤cation of the status quo in a society where it was neither possible to contest the colonial power nor feasible to simply follow the elders.5 We think that the words “traditional” and “customary,” stripped of their political implications, can be used as synonyms and in a constructive way. For the limited purposes of this book we accept the classic, broad de¤nition of what is meant by tradition/custom given by Pospisil: “a law that is internalized by a social group,” a law that “the majority of the group considers . . . to be binding.”6 This de¤nition has the merit of creating an immediate link between the legal phenomenon and the groups who express it, and it is consequently an appropriate starting point for an analysis of legal pluralism that is centered on power relationships between social and political actors. Leaving aside for now the theoretical and lexical debate, a much larger problem is that of the size of the relevant groups. The term “kinship ” denotes ties larger than the extended family and involves rules of descent, the transmission of group membership, or other rights such as inheritance and property rights.7 But which kinship unit is implied by the codes? Is it the ethnie, the clan, the lineage, the enlarged family, or something else? This is in fact a three-pronged question: it ¤rst involves the precise anthropological meaning of these words; second, their application to the real world of Eritrea, and third, how much this reality is properly described and exempli¤ed by the codes—and by their translations . For reasons of space, only a few remarks are possible; to describe these problems, an entire book would probably not be enough. Clan is a general term and usually refers to groups organized around different forms of lineage that claim to descend from a common ancestor , who may be a mythical ¤gure. A clan may be endogamous or exogamous , it can be organized on the basis of lineage, it can be spread territorially , or it can constitute a political unity. Anthropologists also identify as particular features of a clan a feeling of “corporateness” within its members, strengthened by rituals, war, political decisions, and land held in common.8 A clan can split into lineages, and each of these may subdivide. A lineage can be described as a group “of individuals descending unilineally from a known common ancestor.”9 A subdivision may occur because of a feeling in the village that a lineage has become too big. It could also occur with the migration of...

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