ROAD TO VIOLENCE: LAND ALIENATION, ROAD DEATHS AND STATE-MAKING IN THE LOWER OMO VALLEY, SOUTH-WEST ETHIOPIA

Among the forms of violence concomitant with the development of large-scale commercial agriculture, road deaths are rarely mentioned. In Ethiopia’s lower Omo valley, many agro-pastoralists have been killed or injured by vehicles since the development of sugar cane plantations, which prompted retaliatory killings, mostly of vehicle-users. Observers have however interpreted these killings as acts of resistance to land alienation. This article unpacks the counter-violence following road deaths alongside local reactions to land clearance to refine our understanding of resistance in contexts of land dispossession. By looking at the selective legal prosecution by state institutions of homicides committed in the area, it explores how social orders, that of the agro-pastoralists and that of the state, compete. It argues that the official silence about road deaths and the state’s violent response to revenge killings is indicative of a process of state’s monopolisation of violence: the selection of ‘which violences matter’. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ .