Living With Conflict: Borana’s Resilience in Southern Ethiopia

Conflict has become a defining feature of pastoralist frontiers in East Africa since the 1990s. The interplay between multilayered actors and factors and the existence of competing interests in instigating conflicts and in the process of building peace have complicated intergroup relations in the region. The conflicts exhibit the convergence of state and non-state actors and natural as well as human drivers of conflicts. While grappling with traditional as well as emerging forms of conflict, the Borana pastoralist community of southern Ethiopia has devised different strategies of coping with conflict and violence by building on social networks, cultural capital, cross-border identity bonds, and alliances. This article discusses the agency, resilience, and coping mechanisms of the community in the context of conflict and violence by focusing on locally generated knowledge. It argues that conflict and violence build the agency of local communities, create new alliances, re(build) institutions, and reconfigure state-society relations.