The Status of Craftsmen among the Konso of South-West Ethiopia

Abstract

Opening ParagraphThere are many references to despised groups of artisans in the literature on Ethiopia, but unfortunately they are scattered through travel books which, from the anthropologist's point of view, are too superficial to permit a sustained and rigorous analysis of the variant forms of this phenomenon. Among such works I would include the publications of Jensen and the Frobenius Institute. After only five weeks' stay among the Konso he attempted an ambitious account of their religion and society in Im Lande des Gada that is false or distorted in almost every detail, not excepting matters of elementary observation. Shack's study of the Gurage and the status of craftsmen among them is the only one known to the author which can be considered as the work of a professional anthropologist. This article is therefore intended partly as a contribution to the ethnography of artisan status in Ethiopia. Only when we have many more such studies will we be in a position to appraise the situation properly, and to ascertain the basic characteristics of discrimination against craftsmen in Ethiopia. It may well be that the criteria of discrimination cannot be reduced to a single pattern.