ABSTRACT
The Borana Zone of Ethiopia has nearly always been described as a ‘remote’ and ‘state-less’ area. On the contrary, this chapter shows that the zone has never been an isolated and static margin as the rhetoric has tended to portray it. Instead, it is a place where continuous process of state formation takes place through the intersection of national policies and local processes. I demonstrate this by attending to sedentarisation and territorialisation processes, through which various actors attempt to rearrange people and resources. The core argument of this chapter is that the local everyday forms of state-making are not necessarily opposed to central state policies but occur at the intersection of interests between national policies, state and non-state forms of authority (community leaders), NGO activities, and the local population. This chapter, therefore, aims to widen our understanding of state formation by demonstrating how it takes place through triadic interactions and negotiations between the state (central state policies), NGOs, and groups of local population (ordinary people and local elites).
