Mai Weini - a Small Village in the Highlands of Eritrea: A Study of the People, Their Livelihood and Land Tenure during the Times of Turbulence

Book Description
This book is an anthropological account of the lives of the villagers in the Eritrean village of Mai Weini. It is a study of the people, their livelihood and land tenure during times of turbulence in the village and in the nation of Eritrea. Mai Weini, a village in the Eritrean highlands, has been faced with numerous challenges such as drought and the effects of the thirty-year war fought between Eritrean liberation fighters and the Ethiopian government. The war culminated in Eritrea's independence in 1993. The Eritrean war for independence, is one of the longest wars in Africa's history. In this comprehensive study of Mai Weini Tronvoll examines the question of how the people of rural Eritrea coped with the terrifying events of the war, and managed to maintain and reproduce a "kind of" normal life in the villages. Mai Weini, or "Sweet Water" in English (lit. "water grape"), is a village composed of some 85 households and 333 inhabitants. It is a small cluster of dwellings situated in the rugged and barren mountainous landscape of Eritrea's highlands. In addition to exploring Mai Weini, however, the book also provides a general ethnographic account of the Tigrinya-speaking Semitic people of these highlands. Using Mai Weini as an example, basic questions are answered such as: How do the villagers live? How are their relationships among themselves organized? What are their activities during an annual cycle? How do they cope with the unpredictable whims of nature, and with possible crop failure? In what way has the war affected village life? To what degree does religious adherence influence their daily activities? What are the organizing principles of the land tenure system, and to what degree do they affect the organization of the village?

From the Back Cover
Eritrean society and traditional culture had been off limits for social anthropological research for three decades due to the prolonged liberation war, which came to an end in may 1991. Kjetil Tronvoll was the first anthropologist to enter liberated Eritrea, only a few weeks after the fighting had ceased, to carry out field work in a remote highland village of Tigrinya-speaking peasants. This is an ethnographic account which explores the social organization of an Eritrean highland community and the livelihood of the peasants. The kinship system of the highlands is examined in detail. Analysis shows that it interlinks the individuals and the villages of the highlands into an intricate web of kinship. The lineage system, or gezauti defines, among other factors, a form of social hierarchy and the entitlement of access to land in the particular villages. The study indicates that the systems of kinship and land tenure in highland Eritrea have provided for the social and cultural survival of the peasantry even during the disintegrating influences of famine and war. A considerable segment of the generations fled the villages or joined the liberation army, and therefore did not have any significant impact on social transformation of local environments. The youngsters that remained were easily co-opted by the older villagers into the existing social system and cultural order, facilitating the continuity of the land tenure and kinship systems. The traditional systems of land tenure and kinship in highland Eritrea are today challenged by the new reform policies of the Eritrean government. An integral part of their development strategies is to sustain and enhance national sentiments created during the liberation war by disentangling the closely knit rural communities, dismantling their corporate character, and linking the individual citizen directly to the state apparatus in order to foster an all-embracing notion of national identity. The author argues that by radically changing the communal land tenure system and dismantling the descent structure, without creating any sustainable alternatives, the government has struck a blow at the fountain of social organization of the peasantry, the social and cultural consequences of which remain to be seen. This is committed social anthropology at its best.

About the Author
Kjetil Tronvoll is a researcher at Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, University of Oslo. He specailizes in the Horn of Africa.


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This study is an ethnographic account which explores the social organization of an Eritrean highland community and the livelihood of the peasants. The kinship system of the highlands is examined in detail. Analysis shows that it interlinks the individuals and the villages of the highlands into an intricate web of kinship. The lineage system, or gezauti, defines, among other factors, a form of social hierarchy and the entitlement of access to land in the particular villages. The traditional systems of land tenure and kinship in highland Eritrea are today challenged by the new reform policies of the Eritrean government. An integral part of their development strategies is to sustain and enhance national sentiments created during the liberation war by disentangling the closely knit rural communities, dismantling their corporate character, and linking the individual citizen directly to the state apparatus in order to foster an all-embracing notion of national identity. The author argues that by radically changing the communal land tenure system and dismantling the descent structure, without creating any sustainable alternatives, the government has struck a blow at the foundation of social organization of the peasantry, the social and cultural consequences of which remain to be seen.


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