Description
Abstract For decades Somalia endured under significant mostly volatile societal and political transformations. Modern scholarly attempts to concussively theorize development in the Horn of African country so far provided limited, or some will insist partial elucidation. Not just the philosophical ideas guiding such studies but equally the analytical approaches rested mainly on colonial and post-colonial perspectives, not least the tendency to generalization and macro dichotomization. For instance scholars propagating the dominant and circumstantially popular qabiilah (clan) perspective promoted the centrality of lineage based kinship social groups engaged in seemingly eternal competition for accessing and manipulating power and prestige in the society. While critics referred to multiple social, economic and political factors shaping and classifying the society into conflicting constituents, mainly mobilized masses countering and sometimes complementing elites. Classical social scientists such as Ibn-Khaldun proposed a model for the transformation of societies from primitive stages of Badawa basically driven by the dynamics of tribal assabiya to advanced levels of Hadara focusing on interlinked more civilized divisions of labour. Centuries later Durkheim confirmed the civilizational pattern arguing that a social change often shifts from basic mechanical solidarity based on the preservation of continuity and familiarity to the procession of social sophistication and subsequent institutionalization of the society. This paper aims a at intermediate development level referring to the dynamics and the combination of the basics of social interaction with macro institutional stages. Rural (badawa) and urban (hadara) environments though contradicting should not remain conflictual permanently. In the Somali case though the two categories often intermix, distinction between Somalis in the interior rural environments and Somalis in mainly coastal urban agrarian environments exists. Urban coastal residents historically interacted and exchanged with the outside world. A privilege long severed from most rural communities in the country. Nonetheless increased mobility and technical accessibility transformed such condition. Both rural and urban communities now access global IT technology and communities from both sides pursue and link to global migration. We thus need to supplement the macro analytical approaches with what Bourdieu refers to as the meso and micro levels of “dynamics of inter- active social fields” with multiple dimensions, compositions and purposes. In such diversified fields capital and access to economic power remains central to such social formations but the legitimization of such capital to obtaining elevated symbolic societal significance constitutes the core for social as well as economic and political development.| Period | 11 Oct 2012 |
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| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Lillehammer , NorwayShow on map |