The Gaboye of Somaliland

The Historical Process of Emancipation and Marginalisation

Elia Vitturini

• Publisher: Ledizioni
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9788855269803
• eBook ISBN: 9788855269810
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The book explores the history of a minority group, the Gaboye, in Somaliland, and, using a historical ethnographic approach, addresses two main issues. First, the analysis addresses the transformation and reproduction of the social boundary which separates an ascribed status-based minority group within the society: what symbolic, political, economic and social apparatuses have articulated the boundary and the belonging to this minority group? How have these apparatuses changed? Second, the analysis adopts the trajectory of the minority members in the town of Hargeysa as a perspective on the history of north-western Somali society: from the point of view of an ascribed status-based minority group, what can we see of the social, economic and political changes which occurred during the decades of slow colonial penetration into the area, of urban expansion, of postcolonial state consolidation and collapse, civil war, mass displacement, peace building, and the contemporary waves of diasporisation of this society?

Table of contents

• Copertina
• The Gaboye of Somaliland
• Colophon
• Dedica
• Table of Contents
• Foreword, by Luca Ciabarri
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Who Are the Gaboye? Studying Written Sources and the Search for Conceptual Tools
• PART II The Path of Emancipation in the Town of Hargeysa
• PART III The Dynamic Reproduction of the Gaboye’s Marginality
• Concluding Remarks
• Bibliography
• Interviews
• Images
• Notes