The Meaning of Place in a World of Movement: Lessons from Long-term Field Research in Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

This article examines the link between people and place through a study of the ‘spatial practices’ of a small group of southern Ethiopian agro-pastoralists, the Mursi. Based upon fieldwork stretching over the past 35 years, I argue that there has been a huge change in the way the Mursi collectively imagine the world and their place within it. They have been ‘localized’, by being drawn into the ‘spatial practices’ of the Ethiopian state, and ‘marginalized’, by becoming dependent on values, norms and technologies which lie beyond their own means of production and control. I conclude that to understand how a sense of place becomes bound up with a person's social and individual identity, we must treat place, not as a stage for social activity but as a ‘product’ of it. Such an understanding of the link between people and place helps us to appreciate that displacement is not just about the loss of place, but also about the struggle to make a place in the world, where meaningful action and shared understanding is possible.