Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History, Society

by Ioan M. Lewis

Ioan Lewis details the history and culture of the Somali people, providing a unique window into this little-known culture and its increasingly public predicaments. He provides insight into the complex social, historical, and cultural hinterland that is the Somali heritage and pays close attention to the pervasive influence of traditional nomadism, especially its decentralized nature.Lewis also addresses developments in the Somali political region since the collapse of the Republic in 1991, including the formation and steady development of the democratic state of Somaliland. Though it has grown into a de facto personality, this self-governing outpost of democracy is still officially unrecognized internationally. Lewis concludes with a discussion of the Islamist movement that brought a brief but astonishing period of stability to much of Southern Somalia in late 2006.

Genres: Somalia, Africa, History, Nonfiction, Politics

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1993

About the author

writes also as I.M. Lewis

Reviews

[Johan]

A short book about Somalia and Somaliland with focus on the political history and the events leading up to and including the 'civil war' as well as the pastoral lifestyle in Somalia. Pretty dry and factual and in some places a bit essentialist when describing the Somali people and its clans (a bit like older anthropological works for example 'they' are x [proud, ethnocentric etc]).

But an okay overview or sketch on the topic.

[Aurélien Thomas]

Famine, civil war, tribalism, religious fanaticism, catastrophic interventionism by foreign powers, piracy... Often the topic of sensationalist headlines in our medias, Somalia seems to embody the worse problems among the worse problems plaguing Africa. Here's a country so undermined by so many issues, in fact, that it's quite difficult to disentangle it all to try an understand what is truly going on!

The anthropologist Ioan Lewis, though, offers here a very good introduction to such a complex country, a country those multiple problems are only matched by the disastrous ignorance of its outsiders. It's a very short read (barely an hundred pages or so, four chapters only) but, because it focuses on the essential only, it's highly enlightening. Drop the clichés and brace yourself for blunt facts: if Somalia remains an anomaly contradicting many of our (ethnocentric) expectations, to try and impose upon it our Westernised political and economical model won't help -on the contrary!

Once surmounted the first chapter, describing the country from a purely anthropological perspective (its main clans and tribes, their cultures, the importance of Islam... -a part I personally found, quite frankly, boring) we discover a land both fascinating and unique. Drawing upon its colonial past and the politics that has been affecting it ever since (from scientific socialism to radical Islam) Ioan Lewis lift the veil of a misunderstood country, and it's more than welcome. Somalia may be a stateless nation, chaotic and violent, yet he also delves upon the cases of Somaliland and Puntland, both models of what it means to be anti-models, and which won't fail to leave outsiders pondering...

Such a read, broad yet accessible, simple yet relevant, is more than a beautiful celebration of a country too often reduced to mediatic and caricatural clichés. It's necessary.

[Henri Telkki]

3-4 ⭐

[Melissa Helton]

This book looks mainly at the effects of colonialism and how after independence, the top-down government style didn't work with a nomadic culture, which led to violence, chaos, and collapse. Somaliland split off and there was a mass diaspora. As someone with zero knowledge about these countries when coming to this book, I was a bit overwhelmed. There were so many people, clans, factors, and organizations at play in this complex situation that I struggled to follow it. When I pulled back and tried to see the big picture and let the small names and locations blur, it was easier to follow. I certainly learned a lot.

[David Smith]

This is a tough one - Gerard Prunier likes it so that's generally good enough for me. I need some guidance on the content as some of it varies rather dramatically with some of the impressions I have of Somalia based on previous experience. I am not even remotely suggesting that I disagree with Ioan Lewis - I simply need to gather more information. Bottom line - if you are interested in Somalia you should read this book. There's one of the better bibliographies on the subject at the end.

[Matthew Bond]

Though Lewis does reflect biases that stem from colonial scholarship; his work in Somalia and Somaliland are invaluable to anyone wanting to better understand how current Somali culture and conflict have changed over time. I would recommend reading Besteman's Unraveling Somalia along side with this to get a more balanced understanding of the history and dynamics of the region

[Suketus]

Tiivis paketti Somalian ja Somalimaan lähihistoriasta sisältäen kevyen katsauksen maiden kulttuuriin ja yhteiskuntarakenteeseen. Tenttikirjamainen ja kuivahko tyyli haukotuttaa, mutta aihepiiri on kiinnostava ja saa siksi lukemaan kirjan innolla.

[liberchiropter]

2,5 tähteä

[Caroline Carlisle]

Dry non-fiction that leaves me probably not understanding a lot about Somalia.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1170652.html[return][return]Where Bradbury's Becoming Somaliland concentrates on the former British colony, now an independent though unrecognised state, Lewis, who has been researching Somali history and culture for five decades, looks at the bigger picture of the failure of the state of Somalia and the pathetic international strategy to try and put things right - a cycle of offering formal international recognition to a series of pseudo-governments with little actual authority and no legitimacy which goes as far back as 1990. Lewis' book was published late last year, just before the latest round in this expensive project of wishful thinking, but there is no reason to suppose that things will be much different this time. Meanwhile the most democratic regime in the region continues to function moderately well, if without international recognition.[return][return]Lewis also pays some attention to the wider regional context, particularly (of course) the Ogaden conflict in Ethiopia - the Ogaden are a Somali clan, and advocates of a Greater Somalia still hope to annex them along with northern Kenya and Djibouti (and I wish Lewis had also written a bit more about those two). And there is the question of geopolitics as well: the British administration of all the Somali areas bar Djibouti during and after the second world war; the Soviet support of the "scientific socialism" of Siad Barre's regime, which ended after the Ethiopian revolution brought Addis into the Communist camp; the American bombardment of the country in support of Ethiopia's invasion two years ago in the cause of fighting Islamism (and of course the US and EU are now celebrating the election as president of the same guy they chased out of Mogadishu then).

[Yaasir]

THIS IS GOOD BOOK A SIDE OF UNDERSIGNED THE CULTURE SOMALILAND AND THE MEANING POINT OF DEFERENCE B/W SOMALILAND AND SOMALIA .... I LIKE THIS BOOK ... :-)

[Gail Sasse]

Easy to read

[Trista]

Informative though brief, and a bit suspect in its old school anthropology-tone.

I'd like to find another book on the area to round this out.