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Gérard Prunier and Eloi Ficquet (eds.). 2015. Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia: Monarchy, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Zenawi. London: Hurst. 521 pp.
Few states in Africa can claim to have bewitched as many visitors, whether veteran chroniclers or first-time observers, than Ethiopia. Countless numbers of Ethiopians and scholars alike have long argued that the country, with its dazzling mix of ethnicities and religions and its idiosyncratic history of conquest, independence, and myth is a politico-cultural order sui generis: Ethiopia as an essentially incomparable state, nation or even civilization. A new volume, edited by East Africa grandee Gérard Prunier and anthropologist-cum-historian Eloi Ficquet, seeks to explore how under the aegis of Meles Zenawi, paramount leader of Ethiopia and the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) between 1991 and 2012, the country "has been progressively -though reluctantly- normalized" (p. 2). To do so, they solicited sixteen chapters that aim to chart continuity and change in what is often referred to as Africa's oldest polity-from Ethiopia's imperialist past, the longue durée of Muslim-Christian relations, and urban development to Rastafarianism and the shift from revolutionary Marxism to state developmentalism. The end result leaves the reader sometimes impressed, but all too often not wholly satisfied.
Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia attempts to identify the structural forces and critical junctures that have marked...