The Vitality of Indigenous Religious Institutions Maintaining Social Cohesion Among the Gurage People of South Central Ethiopia

This paper is designed to examine the origin, development and dynamics of the traditional religious and social cohesion institutions of Bozhe, Og'yet, shana and bittar among the Gurage of South Western Ethiopia through following historical and contemporary approaches. Following the propagation of Islam and Christianity into the Gurage land, these indigenous institutions have been changed drastically through the processes of syncretization and accommodation. Despite many of the Gurage people were converted either to Christianity or Islam through the historic processes of religious syncretizm, they continued worshipping the Bozhe and Og'yet deities and make use of the indigenous institutions of shana and bittar to handle different dispute cases. At present, the Gurage people show their preference to the indigenous institutions of bittar and shana to handle ritually sanctioned cases that cannot be resolved by state institutions. Therefore, this study needs to examine the role of these indigenous religious and social cohesion institutions in maintaining peace and stability at individual and tribal levels among the Gurage

The Intertwinement of Spiritual and Local Healing Practices Among the Gurage People of South-Central Ethiopia

This study mainly focuses on the Syncretized processes and practices of scriptural and local healing and its interlacement with extraordinary healing power of traditional cults that have been ubiquitous for centuries among the Gurage ethnic groups who mainly inhabit the south central Ethiopia. Following the introduction of Islam and Christianity into the Gurage Land, the newly converted into either of the two religions, especially those agents of traditional cults, were remained claiming that they have an extraordinary power to cure diseases which were previously believed to be healed only through performing traditional ritual rites. This study also intends to explore the extraordinary heal power of the traditional deities that are used to cure various kinds of diseases through their ritual agents. Thus, an ethnographic study on the processes and practices of spiritual knowledge of healing will be carried out and how ritually sanctified disease, which were defined under the frame of the Sufi Islam religious denominations, especially the Sufi shrine of Abret, are cured. The main data gathering tools that are opted for employing in the selected research area are unstructured and semi structured interview, focus group discussion and participant observation. DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/58-02 Publication date:September 30th 201

Theoretical and Empirical Explanations on the Continued Relevance of Local Conflict Resolution Institutions Among the Afar Community of Ethiopia

Various scholars, to make sense of either the decline or viability of local institutions of conflict resolution, have put various explanations forward. In this article, I shall discuss the relevance and limits of existing analytical frameworks and explore new explanatory possibilities. Most studies view local institution’s vitality in reference to the relative weakness of state institutions. By the same token, their continuity is considered to be transient, implying that as soon as the state becomes strong it incorporates local institutions with which the viability of the latter is doomed to diminish. Henceforth, This article has explored the issue of the vitality of local institutions of conflict resolutions among the Afar from two perspectives. The first one is internal explanation for the continued relevance of local institutions. The second is external explanations with a special reference to state institutions and their mode of incorporation into the Afar cultural world. DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/81-01 Publication date: January 31st 202