Ethiopia in Theory is a thought-provoking original work that pushes disciplinary boundaries. It is bold in its theoretical and epistemological grounding, and emancipatory in its practical implications. The book shines the spotlight on knowledge production and social science practice in Africa. This is done by narrating the story of the Ethiopian student movement of the 1960s and 1970s and how this movement appropriated Marxist and social science ideas. The book launches into an investigation that redefines our understanding of critical theory in an African context. The main concerns of this inquiry have implications for how we view and approach knowledge production within African Studies. One of the original contributions of the book is that not only is it interested in ideas, in and of themselves, but also it shows how these can imbue social practices and their consequences. The main questions driving this investigation are answered in Part One of the book, where the case study of the Ethiopian student movement is presented as an instance of the indigenization of social science ideas in Africa. Part Two, on the other hand, offers insights into what this African case study might tell us about the practice of critical social science outside its European origins.
The book is divided into an Introduction followed by the two main parts. The Introduction outlines the context and delineates the scope of the book. Part One is the case study, which tells the story of revolution and the evolution of Marxist and social science ideas in the Ethiopian student movement. This part consists of five chapters that contextualize the two main concerns of the book: the ways in which Marxist and social science ideas are localized in an African context; and the problem of the social sciences in Africa. These chapters narrate how young Ethiopian intellectuals turned to social science ideas in an attempt to confront their complex social conditions. The chapters present the legacy of the student movement as an instance of how ideas are linked to social change. This analysis is underpinned by a robust examination of archival and oral sources.
Zeleke proposes Tizita as an alternative method ‘to get at the historical dynamics at play between knowledge production and social practice in Ethiopia’. Anyone with some knowledge of Ethiopia might recognize Tizita as a form of song or music. However, for Zeleke, Tizita is invoked as a methodological form that allows her to account for, and make sense of, a structure of feeling, inheritances and memories of revolution. Tizita is Zeleke’s alternative to the positivism and empiricism that have dogged the social sciences in Ethiopia. Through this novel method, she is able to theorize the meaning of the 1974 revolution and its aftermath.
Chapter 3 is perhaps the most captivating, where we see evidence of the nexus between social science ideas and political practice. Here, we are taken on a journey that narrates the debates that dominated the Ethiopian student movement. This chapter presents the intellectual biographies of key figures in the student movement, who would later become the architects of state policy in Ethiopia. The social science ideas that were hotly contested in the student movement emerge as policy debates in the aftermath of the revolution. This leads to what Zeleke calls a ‘passive revolution’. For Zeleke, the period after the contested 2005 election marks a kind of cul-de-sac in social science ideas in Ethiopia. Part Two of the book is a heavy theoretical meditation on the ‘Problem of the social sciences in Africa’. This is where Zeleke confronts the positivist paradigm that dominates the social sciences in Africa, including Ethiopia. In this part of the book, she wrestles with historical, theoretical and philosophical questions that are central to the problems of social science practice in Africa.
Ethiopia in Theory is a major contribution to the literature that theorizes political thought and social practice in Africa and beyond. Zeleke presents Ethiopian political history in an outstanding cross-disciplinary analysis that links the specific case of Ethiopian revolutionary political thought and practice to the history of global social relations. This provides for a more nuanced approach to addressing longstanding debates such as those relating to nationality, land and democracy in Ethiopia. Yet, for a book that claims to present the questions raised in the Ethiopian student movement as African questions, the book does rather little to make this connection. It is not clear, for example, how knowledge production in Ethiopia in the 1960s and 1970s might have resonated with similar processes elsewhere on the continent in the same period. One thinks of the robust debates that were taking place at CODESRIA, for instance, and how these might have intersected with those in Ethiopia. Nonetheless, what Zeleke does with the history of the Ethiopian student movement challenges us to reconsider how we think about knowledge production and critical theory within African Studies. Most importantly, the book opens up new pathways for thinking about some of the most urgent social questions facing Ethiopia today.
