Abstract
The early 1990s ushered in a global transition from the tense East–West divide to a hopeful post-Cold War politics of good governance, democracy, and human rights promotion. In Ethiopia, this messy global transition was punctuated by a violent overthrow of Ethiopia’s military socialist state by an ethnic rebel army in 1991. The most controversial provision of the new constitution is Article 39, which entitles “every nation, nationality and people an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.” The chapter provides an ethnographic account of the extraordinary national experiment, with special focus on the lived experiences of ethnic minorities of southern Ethiopia. It examines interrelated issues. The chapter discusses how the globally inspired and nationally designed state reform was negotiated in a cultural landscape of endemic hierarchy of ethnicity, clan, status/quasi-caste, class, and patriarchy. It shows how the new politics of ethnic representation reconfigured yet again the often taken-for-granted boundary between the state, society, and culture.