Results by title

3 books match the query 'Mains, Daniel'

cover of Hope Is Cut: Youth, Unemployment, and the Future in Urban Ethiopia

Hope Is Cut

Youth, Unemployment, and the Future in Urban Ethiopia

Daniel Mains

Temple University Press, 2013

How do ambitious young men grapple with an unemployment rate in urban Ethiopia hovering around fifty percent? Urban, educated, and unemployed young men have been the primary force behind the recent unrest and revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. Daniel Mains' detailed and moving ethnographic study, Hope is Cut, examines young men's struggles to retain hope for the future in the midst of economic uncertainty and cultural globalization.

Through a close ethnographic examination of young men's day-to-day lives Hope is Cut explores the construction of optimism through activities like formal schooling, the consumption of international films, and the use of khat, a mild stimulant.

Mains also provides a consideration of social theories concerning space, time, and capitalism. Young men here experience unemployment as a problem of time—they often congregate on street corners, joking that the only change in their lives is the sun rising and setting. Mains addresses these factors and the importance of reciprocity and international migration as a means of overcoming the barriers to attaining aspirations.

[more]
cover of Under Construction: Technologies of Development in Urban Ethiopia

Under Construction

Technologies of Development in Urban Ethiopia

Daniel Mains

Duke University Press, 2019

Over the past decade, Ethiopia has had one of the world's fastest growing economies, largely due to its investments in infrastructure, and it is through building dams, roads, and other infrastructure that the Ethiopian state seeks to become a middle-income country by 2025. Yet most urban Ethiopians struggle to meet their daily needs and actively oppose a ruling party that they associate with corruption and mismanagement. In Under Construction Daniel Mains explores the intersection of development and governance by examining the conflicts surrounding the construction of specific infrastructural technologies: asphalt and cobblestone roads, motorcycle taxis, and hydroelectric dams. These projects serve as sites for nation building and the means for the state to assert its legitimacy. The construction process—as well as Ethiopians' experience of living with the disruption of construction zones—reveals the tension and conflict between the promise of progress and the possibility of failure. Mains demonstrates how infrastructures as both ethnographic sites and as a means of theorizing such concepts as progress, development, and the state offer a valuable contrast to accounts of African abjection and decline.
[more]
cover of War, Ethnicity, and Religion in Contemporary Ethiopia

War, Ethnicity, and Religion in Contemporary Ethiopia

Edited by Data D. Barata, Donald L. Donham, and Daniel Mains

University of Wisconsin Press, 2027

Since the downfall of the governing coalition in 2018, Ethiopia has been transformed by a series of intense civil conflicts. Ethnic tensions, an exploding population of young people who lack economic opportunities, increasingly tense religiosity, and the legacy of Cold War policies and ideologies are all dynamics found not only in Ethiopia but much more widely in the developing world today. Yet the distinctive combination of these social, cultural, and historical forces in Ethiopia helps shine a light on the country’s unique past, its unsettled present, and its uncertain future. This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the social and political causes of these conflicts as well as their profoundly violent effects.

[more]