RESETTLMENT, CULTURAL CONTACT AND EMERGING SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN BASKETO SPECIAL DISTRICT

ABSTARCT This thesis tries to examine the state driven resettlement program in Basketo District in Southwestern part of Ethiopia. The driving force for the resettlement program were to come out from drought prone areas, to give relief densely populated area and to rehabilitee the lands of intensively used land. This resettlement program brought six different ethnic groups together. It created cultural contacts, contradictions of world views amongst the resettles and the host community. The cultural contact had brought changes to the host culture livelihood, production and resource conservation social transformations. The researcher used ethnography as a major strategy of a qualitative analysis for the research analysis. Data have been collected from field observation, interviews and focus group discussions, from archives of the district’s Office of Culture, Tourism and Sports, and Office of Agriculture, This research challenges the argument of the conventional world resource consuming world views, extensive land use pattern, resource utilization outlook differences, ecocide consuming characteristics and conflicts for the resource use cultures among the resettles and the host communities, the enforcement of the government by investigating the locals resource conservation mechanism. The findings of the study show that resettlement that does not recognize the local livelihood brings competing outcomes in the host.