Horn of Africa

It has now become common place to cite to old roman dictum that the pirate was considered in ancient times to be the enemy of humanity (Hostis Humani Generis). Surely, it would by now have become another mediatized platitude were it not for the curious fact that presently, states of such disparate political and economic interests as India, China, France, Iran, the United States, Yemen, Tanzania, the Seychelles, and many others, now meet monthly in Baharin to share information on piracy under the auspices of Shared Awareness and Deconfliction Meetings (SHADE). What is the logic that binds these states in their collaborative counter-piracy efforts? This paper seeks to understand the circuits of violence and capital which have led to the innovation of a new maritime security complex off the Horn of Africa. In a first instance, this paper provides an analysis of the legal and ideological construction of piracy as it is formally instantiated in international conventions, the European Union’s first naval operation “Atlanta,” and in the piracy trials at the courthouse of Mombasa. Secondly, the securitization of the circulation of commodity capital is analyzed as part of a process of integration and rescaling of erstwhile national state structures and security apparatuses at a regional level. Lastly, moments of confrontation on the high seas are put into relief against a backdrop of structural violence(s). The paper is informed by global-ethnographic methods and research done in the Kenya law courts in the spring of 2010.

This article places English language contacts in a typological and com-parative perspective. It begins with a review of the essentials of language contactterminology: concepts such as substrate, superstrate, and the various kinds of adstrate, as well as borrowing, importation, language shift, and interlanguage aredefined and illustrated. Two sections describe substratal and superstratal contactinfluence in the history of English: language shift from Celtic to English and bor-rowing from Norman French into English. A process of the former kind, substratallanguage shifting toward English, is further described in a separate section with arecent and continuing parallel: the shifting in the direction of Standard AustralianEnglish by speakers of Aboriginal Australian languages, who have thereby createda widely used interlanguage, Aboriginal English. Next, change of language type bylanguage contact is illustrated with word order transformations from VSO to SOVand conversely, and it is argued that English too has undergone its own and uni-que type change from the Germanic Verb-second/Verb-late type to the SVO typeas a consequence of language contact. The final section (before the conclusion)addresses the question of how the non-Indo-European features which Celtic passedon to English arose in the Isles in the first place. The more than a century oldtheory that they developed on a pre-Indo-European substrate is paralleled by a re-construction of the passing-on of SOV order in three linguistic layers at the Hornof Africa, namely from Nilo-Saharan to (originally VSO) Cushitic and further to(originally VSO) Amharic. The Concluding Remarks emphasize the singular impor-tance of English for the developing general theory of language contact and the pro-mise this theory holds for a better understanding of the history of this language.

Research project to be conducted as a Martin Buber Society Fellow at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, from October 2014 onwards. In my coming post-doc research I will look at both Christian and Muslim royal women in the Horn of Africa as influential agents of cultural and political change as well as political actors in their own right. Among others, I wish to trace and evaluate the significance of both Solomonic Ethiopian queens and princesses as well as royal women from various Muslim principalities and sultanates to offer a novel and comprehensive insight into the history of power players in the Horn of Africa between 1300-1650.

""Despite renewed hope in the future of Somalia, post-transition efforts towards peace and stability in this country face numerous challenges. This situation report notes that progress will be defined by the dynamics surrounding the strengths or weaknesses
of the new Somali Federal Government (SFG), the rapidly adapting al-Qaeda-linked Islamist al-Shabaab and the success or failure of international support  in the pursuit of peace. The emerging perception among sections of the Somali population as well as
the international community of a weak and weakening Somali central government constitutes one of the most challenging developments, with far-reaching implications for the collective push for peace in the country. This situation report proposes that efforts should be aimed at strengthening the government,
since its performance is central to any realistic progress in the country.""

"Recent discoveries in Ethiopia, Arabia and Yemen lead us to reconsider the "Arabo-Ethiopian" style coined by Henri Breuil, Paolo Graziosi and Pavel Červíček, and to define a new "Chabbè-Galma" school of petroglyphs, specific to Ethiopia.
De nouvelles découvertes effectuées en Éthiopie, en Arabie et au Yémen  conduisent à réviser la  notion  de  style «arabo-éthiopien» constituée par Henri Breuil, Paolo  Graziosi et Pavel Červíček, puis à  définir une nouvelle école de gravures rupestres, dite de «Chabbè-Galma», et propre à  l'Éthiopie. "