This thesis examines the underlying causes of food insecurity, famine in general and green famine in particular in the enset-dominant livelihood zones of Kambata land in southern Ethiopia, which are historically considered more resilient and less vulnerable to food insecurity and famine than other parts of Ethiopia. Given Ethiopia's long-standing history of food insecurity and famines, the discourse of food insecurity and famine is dominated by natural and demographic factors as the main causes. In order to unpack the multi-layered underlying causes of food insecurity in general and green famine in particular, the thesis adopts Sen's analytical framework of ‘entitlement to food'. Using multi-site qualitative research techniques, this thesis captures the perceptions of different actors at different levels about the causes of green famine, identifies the sources of livelihood vulnerability and the types of livelihood strategies undertaken by households in the study area. By systematically capturing and analysing these different aspects, the study concludes that the causes of green famine extend beyond the dominant narratives of drought and population growth, and that these factors alone cannot fully explain famine occurrence. Green famine is caused by a web of complex and intertwined policy-related, political, natural, socio-­‐economic and demographic factors that have long been present in the study area. The thesis further investigates how the contemporary understanding and classification of famine is dominated by anthropometric and mortality outcomes (‘objective indicators') and thresholds set by outsiders and how ‘subjective indicators' such as the perceptions, knowledge, experience and coping strategies of famine victims are undervalued and given less weight by ‘famine scales'. By incorporating ‘subjective indicators' of famine, this thesis challenges conventional famine conceptualisation and measurement and recommends that these indicators be given equal treatment and weight to ‘objective indicators' in famine classification.

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Performance monitoring is commonly portrayed as providing a uniquely objective, rational foundation for decisions, based on a single-stranded feedback loop between setting objectives and measuring results. In this thesis, I investigate whether this portrayal is accurate. I analyse whether the linear model underlying performance monitoring provides an adequate basis for understanding decisions about access to rural water supply in Ethiopia. My examination focuses primarily on the politics of knowledge production from three angles. First, I examine whether the assumptions underlying the definition of ‘access' to rural water used in performance monitoring in Ethiopia, adequately represent the divergent notions of access among the relevant actors. My findings show that formal framings of access, codified in national and international guidelines and benchmarks, focus on technical aspects of the water supply infrastructure. I bring to light that the goal of performance monitoring in relation to achieving ‘access' is driven by the methods used to measure it, mainly the parameters of infrastructure, volume, distance and quality, suggesting a circularity between framings of the inputs to and objectives of appraisal. In this self-referential process, a particular image of the world determines the meaning of performance, which is used as a yardstick. The power of this dynamic is apparent in Ethiopian stakeholders' characterisations of access, which, even when critical, revolve narrowly around these dominant parameters. This one-dimensional and technical framing of access, constantly reproduced in self-referential monitoring circles, contrasts starkly with the multi-dimensional and dynamic nature of the water access experiences of local residents in Ethiopia. Second, I test whether, in reality, monitoring processes conform to the linearity assumed by the feed-back function of performance monitoring. The process tracing method used to illuminate the political and power dynamics of monitoring processes, shows that sector government actors at different administrative levels, with different rationales, provide different stories of ‘access'. Viewed from this perspective, performance monitoring can be seen not, as conventionally asserted, as a uniquely rational appraisal of performance, but rather as being about ‘performing monitoring' – the playing out on a management stage of certain politically-necessary performances. At the same time, I find that numerous less formalised monitoring practices proceed in parallel with the formal PM process, which, together, form a body of largely ‘tacit' knowledge that informs sector stakeholders' daily work. It is this wider body of knowledge, rather than only formalised PM results, that informs decisions. Third, I investigate the mechanisms that led to the formulation of specific decisions associated with rural water access and the role in these of performance monitoring. I find that particular decisions, such as repairs to rural water schemes, have multiple causes, among which performance monitoring is a contributory and necessary, but not sufficient factor. My investigation of criteria affecting budget allocations highlights that sector offices' limited control over them contributes to making strategic planning a rubber stamping exercise whose processes can be characterised as ‘muddling through' as opposed to adhering to the linear model suggested by Results-based Management. My findings highlight the need to break the self-referential cycle of narrowly framed performance monitoring exercises. They suggest greater attention to the ‘tacit' monitoring practices in local settings, and a focus on the process of monitoring and the power relations within it, to complement the dominant focus on monitoring targets and indicators.

L’émergence de l’Afrique dans l’œuvre de Michel Leiris témoigne de sa volonté de connaître l’autre et de se réévaluer par la rencontre de l’autre. Leiris sillonne l’Afrique d’Ouest en Est au cours de la mission Dakar/Djibouti de 1931 à 1933 en tant que secrétaire archiviste de la mission ethnographique et linguistique dirigée par Marcel Griaule. Cette mission est une occasion pour Leiris de rentrer en contact aves les Africains et de s’éloigner pour un moment de l’Europe. Le séjour à Sanga, lui permet de pénétrer dans l’univers sacré des Dogon et d’analyser la symbolique des masques. De même son séjour en Abyssinie le met en contact avec les possédés et les génies zar. L’Éthiopie est le dernier pays visité par Leiris et le pays qui le marque le plus fortement. Les Noirs ne font aucune différence entre Leiris et les autres colons blancs à cette époque de la colonisation. De son contact avec l’Afrique naissent plusieurs ouvrages dont L’Afrique fantôme et La Langue secrète des Dogon de Sanga. Leiris espère par son voyage en Afrique trouver une thérapie à ses maux. Dans cette vaste entreprise, il verra se briser au contact des Africains le mythe du voyage régénérateur et ne parviendra pas à se défaire de ses obsessions. L’Afrique fantôme apporte un témoignage sur la position ambiguë de l’ethnologie de cette époque. En toute objectivité, il essaie de tout dire sur lui et sur ce qu’il ressent en Afrique. Il fait de l’altérité sa principale préoccupation ; de l’Afrique aux Antilles, il s’intéresse aux cultures des Noirs tout en ayant souvent un avis critique à leur egard. Il devient l’ethnologue de lui-même, interrogeant le monde à partir de l’échantillon de catégorie humaine qu’il est, se faisant témoin extérieur, en quelque sorte, de ce qui se déroule en lui et autour de lui. L’Afrique reste un fantôme pour Leiris à l’image d’Emawayish, la Gondarienne d’Éthiopie dont il tombe amoureux pendant son séjour en Abyssinie. / The emergence of Africa in the work of Michel Leiris testifies his willingness to know the other and at the same time to re-evaluate his own self through the encounter with the other. Leiris travels through Africa from the west to the east during the Dakar/Djibouti mission from 1931 to 1933 as the recording archivist of the ethnographic and linguistic mission headed by Marcel Griaule. This mission becomes an occasion for Leiris to get in touch with Africans and to be away from Europe for a moment. His stay in Sanga allows him to enter the sacred universe of Dogon people and to analyse the significance of the masks. As far as that goes, his stay in Abyssinia also gives him the opportunity to be in direct contact with the possessed people and the Zar spirits. Ethiopia is the last country visited by Leiris and it is the country which touches him the most. Blacks do not make any difference between Leiris and the other white colonialists during this particular period of colonisation. His encounter with Africa gives birth to several pieces of work such as Ghost Africa and The Secret Language of Sanga’s Dogons. Leiris hopes that his travel to Africa will help him find a therapy to his problems. In this vast enterprise, he will see the myth of a regenerative travel broken and will not be able to get rid of his obsessions. Ghost Africa is a testimony on the ambiguous position of ethnology of this particular period. Objectively; he tries to say everything on his own self and on what he feels while in Africa. The other becomes his main concern, from Africa to the West Indies; he is interested in the cultures of the black people with often a critical comment on them. He becomes ethnologist himself, questioning the world from the sample of human category that he is, as an external witness somehow, of what is happening in his own self and around him. Africa remains a ghost for Leiris because of the image of Emawayish, the Gondarian of Ethiopia with whom he falls in love during his stay in Abyssinia.

Arabic text with English summary / This research comprises a section on preliminary issues, an introduction, four chapters with sub-divisions and a conclusion. Preliminary issues focus on the research proposal. The introduction reviews factors contributing to the concealment of Muslims’ roles in Abyssinia through negligence, selective reportage and duplicitous political dealings. Chapter One tackles the varying definitions of Abyssinia diachronically and then provides valuable social, economic, political, religious and climatic information about the country and its peoples. Chapter Two analyses the varying levels of relations between Abyssinia and the Arabian Peninsula including the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious and political ties down the ages. Chapter Three discusses the migration of some of Prophet Muhammad’s companions to Abyssinia and possible reasons for selecting that land for settlement. It details identities of these people, their areas of arrival and domicile; together with a probe into the Christian ruler, Negus’s warm relations with them. Chapter Four overviews Muslim dynasties in Abyssinia: the causes for their formation, prosperity and decline. The bitter conflicts with Christians and followers of traditional religions are also explored; together with outcomes of these for Muslims up to the present. The Conclusion provides a resume of my most important findings. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M.A. (Islamic Studies)

This thesis will examine the portrayal and reception of ‘novel’ technology as constructed spectacle in the military and popular coverage of the Abyssinian (1868) and Ashanti (1873-4) expeditions. It will be argued that new and ‘novel’ military technologies, such as the machine gun, Hale rocket, cartridge rifle, breach-loading cannon, telegraph, railway, and steam tractor, were made to serve symbolic roles in a technophile discourse that cast African expansion as part of a conquest of the natural world. There was a growing confidence in mid-Victorian Britain of the Empire’s dominant position in the world, focused particularly on technological development and embodied in exhibition culture. During the 1860s and ‘70s, this confidence was increasingly extended to the prospect of expansion into Africa, which involved a substantial development of the ‘idea’ of Africa in the British imagination. The public engagement with these two campaigns provides a window into this developing culture of imperial confidence in Britain, as well as the shifting and contested ideas of race, climate, and martial prowess. The expeditions also prompted significant changes to understandings of ‘small wars’, a concept incorporating several important pillars of Victorian culture. It will be demonstrated that discourses of technological superiority and scientific violence were generated in response to anxieties of the perceived dangers posed by the African interior. Accounts of the expeditions demonstrated a strong hope, desire to claim, and tendency to interpret that novel European technology could tame and subjugate the African climate, as well as African populations. This study contributes to debates over the popularity of imperialism in Victorian society. It ties the popularity of empire to the social history of technology, and argues that the Abyssinian and Ashanti expeditions enhanced perceptions of military capability and technological superiority in the Victorian imagination. The efficacy of European technology is not dismissed, but approached as a proximate cause of a shift in culture, termed ‘the technologisation of imperial rhetoric’.

The Swedish Red Cross (SRK) has worked for over a century to improve Swedishsociety and at the same time been involved in aid operations for several internationalhumanitarian disasters and crises. SRK is meant to be a stateless and neutralorganization, but has at the same time since its inception in 1864 SRK had a closecollaboration with the Swedish government. This essay aims to understand how thiscooperation has affected SRK's aid actions in war and if it has affected their neutralityin choosing sides in the wars. The essay's investigation deals with three areas thatwere affected by war and where SRK chose to carry out aid operations. The sourcematerial has been analyzed based on the qualitative text analysis method where thesource material is selected according to the three areas; Abyssinia, Finland andGreece. Furthermore, the empirical evidence has been analyzed based on Joseph S.Nye Jr. Theory of interdependence to better and at a deeper level understandcooperation. The analysis is based on the four concepts that Nye Jr. built his theorybased on: sources, benefits, relative costs, and symmetries. The study shows that therewas a mutual need for a collaboration between SRK and the Swedish state, whichaffected SRK's neutrality into whom and where the aid actions should be sent. / Svenska Röda Korset (SRK) har arbetat i över ett sekel för att förbättra det svenskasamhället och samtidigt varit involverat i hjälpinsatser för flera internationellahumanitära katastrofer och kriser. SRK är tänkt att vara en statslös och neutralorganisation, men har samtidigt sedan starten 1864 haft ett nära samarbete med densvenska regeringen. Denna uppsats syftar till att förstå hur detta samarbete harpåverkat SRK:s biståndsåtgärder i krig och om det har påverkat deras neutralitet i attvälja sida i krigen. Uppsatsens utredning behandlar tre områden som drabbats av krigoch där SRK valde att genomföra biståndsinsatser. Källmaterialet har analyseratsutifrån den kvalitativa textanalysmetoden där källmaterialet väljs ut enligt de treområdena; Abessinien, Finland och Grekland. Vidare har den empiriska evidensenanalyserats utifrån Joseph S. Nye Jr. Teori om interdependens för att bättre och på endjupare nivå förstå samarbete. Analysen bygger på de fyra begrepp som Nye Jrbyggde sin teori utifrån: källor, nytta, relativa kostnader och symmetrier. Studien visaratt det fanns ett ömsesidigt behov av ett samarbete mellan SRK och svenska staten,vilket påverkade SRK:s neutralitet till vem och vart biståndsinsatserna skulle skickas.

The renewed interest in empire, particularly in its British and American variants, has brought into sharper relief the difficulties both metropoles faced in projecting order in the global south. Far from cohesive entities, the British and American empires tried to manage territories that defied many of the political, economic, and legal systems, as well as normative and moral understandings, that enabled their imperial ascendancy. Despite a considerable literature about how metropoles comprehended these frustrated imperial plans, limited insights can be found into the way Britain and the United States coped with the influence of war in the uneven expansion of order. This challenge is brought into focus by examining one of the most direct formulations of the relationship between war and order in US and British imperialism, namely the concept of warlord. The concept’s history, it is argued, provides a glimpse into the far-reaching influence cultural constructions of war had in how US and British policymakers, journalists, and advocates conceived of and projected order in the non-European world. Such influential understandings also inspired overstated conclusions about the degree to which both imperial powers could realise their visions of order in the global south. Drawing on discursive and historical methods, the dissertation develops a conceptual framework that distils the core features of ‘warlords’ in the US and British imperial imaginaries. This conceptual approach is used to revisit some of the most formative encounters with colonial and contemporary ‘warlords’, as captured in British and American policy debates, political commentary, and popular culture, during two highpoints in British and American imperial history, 1815-1914 and 1989-2006 respectively. These arguments bring to the forefront how instead of an ancillary part of conclusions about the inferiority of non-European cultures, as suggested in much of the post-colonial literature, notions of war conditioned many of Britain and the United States’ enduring conception of and strategies for managing the uneven development of order in the global south.