ABSTRACT
The dissolution of Somalia has cleft the nation-state and disaggregated society. Consequently, Somalia's dissolution should rattle broader assumptions as well: about the content of nationalism, tribalism, and the state as defined and debated by academics, and as inhabited by individuals. Before Somalia's dramatic emergence in 1992 as exemplar of anarchy, starvation, and famine, it was little known and hard to study. Certainly there is a great temptation to reach for analogies to help explain what has happened to Somalia and why it has disintegrated so violently. It may have been that Somalia finally became too stretched between demands radiating from the idealized supralocal level downward and inward and from the local/historical level upward and outward. Somalia's dissolution is indissolubly linked to a cause or an effect, which is already inescapably ideologically freighted, namely, tribalism. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
