& the realities of Somalis: historic, social, household, political & economic

Reginald Green

Review of African Political Economy, 1999, vol. 26, issue 79, 33-49

Abstract: This article presents a brief review of khatt; a macro analysis of its roles in the Republic of Somaliland; briefer sketches of divergences of roles in other Somali heartland territories and Kenya concluding with a speculative section on what might be desirable (for Somalis) ways forward. All of these topics are bedevilled by limited prior research, the special pleading strands in much writing, the difficulty in knowing of or securing much of what is known and written and the intensely emotional context of most discourse. The last is not inherently a bad thing — khattmatters. Half of urban household absolute poverty, of farmer cash income and of female instituted divorces are not matters particularly appropriate for mild, disassociated academic curiosity. However, emotion leading to a rush to unanalysed action, and to inventing ‘symbolic truths’, which have meaning but not analytical veridicality, can be the enemy of, just as much as the catalyst toward, the possible.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056249908704359 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:26:y:1999:i:79:p:33-49

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/03056249908704359

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().