Seeks to show that the Sadama are a people quite adaptable to change on their own terms
 
Humane Development seeks to show that the Sadama are a people quite adaptable to change on their own terms. According to their narrative history and from what is know from documents in recent times, individuals have often taken risks that have sometimes favored and at other times gone against the enhancement of their lifestyle.
 
Certainly people can, as the experience of the Sadama shows, effectively participate in change at the local level. They bring a vast experience to the challenge of choosing, and also a knowledge of the relationship between their environment, tools, and organization that has enabled them to survive through the millennia. When people are permitted to draw upon their heritage in making choices, they approach the changing situation with confidence. More­over, the opportunity to choose among alternatives, rather than being subjected to an externally made choice, maximizes the possibility for innovation.
 

John H. Hamer is Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.
 

“Hamer has produced a very well-written ethnographic analysis of development and change among the Sadama, a Cushitic-speaking people living along the Rift Valley.”
—Academic Library Book Review
 

“This is a fine ethnographic portrait, which never loses sight of the relevance of the data for reader comprehension of the life of the Sadama. . . . Hamer manages to elegantly weave together the particular and general in a way which makes for instructive and compelling reading.”
—CHOICE