Daniel K Thompson
Biographic Data
| ID | 100367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel K Thompson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel K |
| FAMILY NAME | Thompson |
| SIGNATURE | THOMPSON D K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Merced |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8396-6879 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Misrepresenting livestock and crisis in the Horn: A response to Duffield and Stockton
We use information from observation in the Ethiopia–Somalia borderlands and quantitative data on livestock exports from the Somali Horn of Africa to refute Duffield and Stockton’s argument that livestock exports from the Horn to the Persian Gulf states originate on the front lines of what they term the ‘permanent war’ in Somalia. Duffield and Stockton’s contribution to discussions of violence and capitalism offers a creative twist on Marxist theo…
The Afterlives of Segmentary Lineage: (Post-)Structural Theory and Postcolonial Politics in the Horn of Africa
Segmentary lineage theory fell out of favor in cultural anthropology during the 1980s. However, the core ideas of segmentary lineage have continued to shape political mobilization as well as political analysis in Africa long after the theory’s supposed death. This article analyzes how and why the framework of segmentary lineage has endured as a potent means of describing and experiencing politics in the Somali-inhabited Horn of Africa. It theoriz…
Decentralization and diaspora capture: Transnationalism, autocracy, and hybrid power in federal Ethiopia
This article analyzes how transnational actors navigate the tensions between federal policy, more localized power structures, and informal forms of authority in Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State (SRS). The concept of ‘diaspora capture’ foregrounds the efforts of state officials and transnational elites to take control of processes through which diaspora identities and patterns of coordination are formed and negotiated within webs of kinship and ec…
The border as temporal horizon: A borderlands massacre and the contested futures of federalism in eastern Ethiopia
In 1995, a coalition of former rebel groups redrew Ethiopia's map, establishing an ethnic-federal system. By 2017, internal border conflicts signalled federalism's potential unravelling. This article analyses expectations about federalism's future among Somalis in Ethiopia, drawing on anthropologies of time to understand how everyday processes of border-making orient around the 'future in the present'. Anthropologists and historians concerned wit…
Is older age more unequal than we think? Estimates from the Survey of Income and Program Participation linked to administrative records
Political Identity as Temporal Collapse: Ethiopian Federalism and Contested Ogaden Histories
Since the 1980s, analyses of African political identities have emphasized identity manipulation as a governance tool. In the Somali Horn of Africa, however, politicians’ efforts to reinvent identities confront rigid understandings of genealogical clanship as a key component of identity and political mobilization. This article explores how government efforts to construct a new ‘Ethiopian–Somali’ identity within Ethiopia’s ethnic-federal system are…
Respatializing Federalism in the Horn’s Borderlands: From Contraband Control to Transnational Governmentality
Analysts documenting the proliferation of border controls amidst the global War on Terror have highlighted recent extensions of state sovereignty into new geographies. Such shifts are largely driven by Western states’ security concerns as they partner with governments in Africa and other migrant-sending spaces to stem migration. In eastern Ethiopia, however, new dynamics of border securitization have facilitated African politicians’ efforts to ex…
Geopolitical boundaries and urban borderlands in an Ethiopian frontier city
Recent approaches to urban borderlands employ border studies theories to analyze urban socio-spatial differentiation. Such approaches highlight how patterns of segregation generate not only social divisions, but also new interactions and connections. This article moves beyond analytic parallels between geopolitical borders and urban borderlands by tracing connections between changing border regimes and urban landscapes in Africa. Drawing on field…
Capital of the imperial borderlands: Urbanism, markets, and power on the Ethiopia-British Somaliland boundary, ca. 1890-1935
This article analyzes contests among Ethiopian and British imperial agents and their ostensible Somali (and other Muslim) subjects for control over commerce in the Ethiopia-British Somaliland borderlands. British claims of sovereignty over Somalis and other Muslim merchants operating in Ethiopia created a field of hybrid commercial control in which neither Britons nor Ethiopians held complete dominance. Competition to capture borderlands commerce…
Border crimes, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and the racialization of sovereignty in the Ethiopia-British Somaliland borderlands during the 1920s
This article argues that the politics of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the 1920s reshaped relations between ethnicity and territorial sovereignty in Ethiopia's eastern borderlands. A 1925 criminal trial involving Gadabursi Somalis began as what Britons deemed a 'tribal matter' to be settled through customary means, but became a struggle for Ethiopia's regent, Ras Tafari, to assert Ethiopia's territorial authority and imperial sovereignty. Brit…
Ethnicity and nationality among Ethiopians in Canada’s census data: A consideration of overlapping and divergent identities
This article addresses the intersection of 'homeland' politics and diaspora identities by assessing whether geopolitical changes in Ethiopia affect ethno-national identifications among Ethiopian-origin populations living abroad. Officials in Ethiopia's largest ethnically-defined states recently began working to improve diaspora-homeland relations, historically characterised by ethnically-mobilized support for opposition and insurgency. The emerge…
Scaling Statelessness: Absent, Present, Former, and Liminal States of Somali Experience in South Africa
This study analyzes how Somalis in South Africa perceive states and statelessness, and how their assertions of authority based on statelessness come into confrontation with competing antiforeigner claims, producing differentiated spatial domains of opportunity. Claims to the legal condition of statelessness provide putative Somalis-including other eastern African migrants who embed themselves in Somali-dominated neighborhoods and economic network…
Risky business and geographies of refugee capitalism in the Somali migrant economy of Gauteng, South Africa
Research on migrant livelihoods in South Africa reveals links between social exclusion and migrant ‘cosmopolitan tactics’, including multi-sited socialities, diverse spatial business strategies and orientations precluding integration into a ‘xenophobic’ host society. Drawing on 10 months of ethnographic research, this study explores how Somali migrants’ business practices and tactics of mobility within and beyond Gauteng Province, South Africa (w…
Reinscriptions of "stateless" socialities in South Africa: "Some thoughts on "Metropolitan nomads: a journey through Jo'burg's 'little Mogadishu
In this commentary, Daniel K. Thompson critically assesses Nereida Ripero-Muñiz and Salym Fayad’s photo essay, “Metropolitan Nomads: A Journey through Jo’burg’s ‘Little Mogadishu.’ The essay is published alongside this commentary
City on edge: Immigrant businesses and the right to urban space in inner-city Johannesburg
Paradoxically, Johannesburg is a quintessentially migrant city and also ranks among the least immigrant-friendly cities in the world. Over the past 20 years, inner-city Johannesburg has been vacated and then reconstituted as a hive of informal trade networks and migration circuits that extends well beyond national borders. Research on immigrants in Johannesburg has contributed significantly to understandings of xenophobic sentiments and immigrant…
Risky business and geographies of refugee capitalism in the Somali migrant economy of Gauteng, South Africa
Research on migrant livelihoods in South Africa reveals links between social exclusion and migrant ‘cosmopolitan tactics’, including multi-sited socialities, diverse spatial business strategies and orientations precluding integration into a ‘xenophobic’ host society. Drawing on 10 months of ethnographic research, this study explores how Somali migrants’ business practices and tactics of mobility within and beyond Gauteng Province, South Africa (w…
City on edge: Immigrant businesses and the right to urban space in inner-city Johannesburg
Paradoxically, Johannesburg is a quintessentially migrant city and also ranks among the least immigrant-friendly cities in the world. Over the past 20 years, inner-city Johannesburg has been vacated and then reconstituted as a hive of informal trade networks and migration circuits that extends well beyond national borders. Research on immigrants in Johannesburg has contributed significantly to understandings of xenophobic sentiments and immigrant…
Scaling Statelessness: Absent, Present, Former, and Liminal States of Somali Experience in South Africa
This study analyzes how Somalis in South Africa perceive states and statelessness, and how their assertions of authority based on statelessness come into confrontation with competing antiforeigner claims, producing differentiated spatial domains of opportunity. Claims to the legal condition of statelessness provide putative Somalis-including other eastern African migrants who embed themselves in Somali-dominated neighborhoods and economic network…
Geopolitical boundaries and urban borderlands in an Ethiopian frontier city
Recent approaches to urban borderlands employ border studies theories to analyze urban socio-spatial differentiation. Such approaches highlight how patterns of segregation generate not only social divisions, but also new interactions and connections. This article moves beyond analytic parallels between geopolitical borders and urban borderlands by tracing connections between changing border regimes and urban landscapes in Africa. Drawing on field…
Border crimes, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and the racialization of sovereignty in the Ethiopia-British Somaliland borderlands during the 1920s
This article argues that the politics of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the 1920s reshaped relations between ethnicity and territorial sovereignty in Ethiopia's eastern borderlands. A 1925 criminal trial involving Gadabursi Somalis began as what Britons deemed a 'tribal matter' to be settled through customary means, but became a struggle for Ethiopia's regent, Ras Tafari, to assert Ethiopia's territorial authority and imperial sovereignty. Brit…
Capital of the imperial borderlands: Urbanism, markets, and power on the Ethiopia-British Somaliland boundary, ca. 1890-1935
This article analyzes contests among Ethiopian and British imperial agents and their ostensible Somali (and other Muslim) subjects for control over commerce in the Ethiopia-British Somaliland borderlands. British claims of sovereignty over Somalis and other Muslim merchants operating in Ethiopia created a field of hybrid commercial control in which neither Britons nor Ethiopians held complete dominance. Competition to capture borderlands commerce…
Respatializing Federalism in the Horn’s Borderlands: From Contraband Control to Transnational Governmentality
Analysts documenting the proliferation of border controls amidst the global War on Terror have highlighted recent extensions of state sovereignty into new geographies. Such shifts are largely driven by Western states’ security concerns as they partner with governments in Africa and other migrant-sending spaces to stem migration. In eastern Ethiopia, however, new dynamics of border securitization have facilitated African politicians’ efforts to ex…
Political Identity as Temporal Collapse: Ethiopian Federalism and Contested Ogaden Histories
Since the 1980s, analyses of African political identities have emphasized identity manipulation as a governance tool. In the Somali Horn of Africa, however, politicians’ efforts to reinvent identities confront rigid understandings of genealogical clanship as a key component of identity and political mobilization. This article explores how government efforts to construct a new ‘Ethiopian–Somali’ identity within Ethiopia’s ethnic-federal system are…
Reinscriptions of "stateless" socialities in South Africa: "Some thoughts on "Metropolitan nomads: a journey through Jo'burg's 'little Mogadishu
In this commentary, Daniel K. Thompson critically assesses Nereida Ripero-Muñiz and Salym Fayad’s photo essay, “Metropolitan Nomads: A Journey through Jo’burg’s ‘Little Mogadishu.’ The essay is published alongside this commentary
The border as temporal horizon: A borderlands massacre and the contested futures of federalism in eastern Ethiopia
In 1995, a coalition of former rebel groups redrew Ethiopia's map, establishing an ethnic-federal system. By 2017, internal border conflicts signalled federalism's potential unravelling. This article analyses expectations about federalism's future among Somalis in Ethiopia, drawing on anthropologies of time to understand how everyday processes of border-making orient around the 'future in the present'. Anthropologists and historians concerned wit…
Is older age more unequal than we think? Estimates from the Survey of Income and Program Participation linked to administrative records
City on edge: Immigrant businesses and the right to urban space in inner-city Johannesburg
Paradoxically, Johannesburg is a quintessentially migrant city and also ranks among the least immigrant-friendly cities in the world. Over the past 20 years, inner-city Johannesburg has been vacated and then reconstituted as a hive of informal trade networks and migration circuits that extends well beyond national borders. Research on immigrants in Johannesburg has contributed significantly to understandings of xenophobic sentiments and immigrant…
Risky business and geographies of refugee capitalism in the Somali migrant economy of Gauteng, South Africa
Research on migrant livelihoods in South Africa reveals links between social exclusion and migrant ‘cosmopolitan tactics’, including multi-sited socialities, diverse spatial business strategies and orientations precluding integration into a ‘xenophobic’ host society. Drawing on 10 months of ethnographic research, this study explores how Somali migrants’ business practices and tactics of mobility within and beyond Gauteng Province, South Africa (w…
Reinscriptions of "stateless" socialities in South Africa: "Some thoughts on "Metropolitan nomads: a journey through Jo'burg's 'little Mogadishu
In this commentary, Daniel K. Thompson critically assesses Nereida Ripero-Muñiz and Salym Fayad’s photo essay, “Metropolitan Nomads: A Journey through Jo’burg’s ‘Little Mogadishu.’ The essay is published alongside this commentary
Scaling Statelessness: Absent, Present, Former, and Liminal States of Somali Experience in South Africa
This study analyzes how Somalis in South Africa perceive states and statelessness, and how their assertions of authority based on statelessness come into confrontation with competing antiforeigner claims, producing differentiated spatial domains of opportunity. Claims to the legal condition of statelessness provide putative Somalis-including other eastern African migrants who embed themselves in Somali-dominated neighborhoods and economic network…
Ethnicity and nationality among Ethiopians in Canada’s census data: A consideration of overlapping and divergent identities
This article addresses the intersection of 'homeland' politics and diaspora identities by assessing whether geopolitical changes in Ethiopia affect ethno-national identifications among Ethiopian-origin populations living abroad. Officials in Ethiopia's largest ethnically-defined states recently began working to improve diaspora-homeland relations, historically characterised by ethnically-mobilized support for opposition and insurgency. The emerge…
Capital of the imperial borderlands: Urbanism, markets, and power on the Ethiopia-British Somaliland boundary, ca. 1890-1935
This article analyzes contests among Ethiopian and British imperial agents and their ostensible Somali (and other Muslim) subjects for control over commerce in the Ethiopia-British Somaliland borderlands. British claims of sovereignty over Somalis and other Muslim merchants operating in Ethiopia created a field of hybrid commercial control in which neither Britons nor Ethiopians held complete dominance. Competition to capture borderlands commerce…
Border crimes, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and the racialization of sovereignty in the Ethiopia-British Somaliland borderlands during the 1920s
This article argues that the politics of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the 1920s reshaped relations between ethnicity and territorial sovereignty in Ethiopia's eastern borderlands. A 1925 criminal trial involving Gadabursi Somalis began as what Britons deemed a 'tribal matter' to be settled through customary means, but became a struggle for Ethiopia's regent, Ras Tafari, to assert Ethiopia's territorial authority and imperial sovereignty. Brit…
Respatializing Federalism in the Horn’s Borderlands: From Contraband Control to Transnational Governmentality
Analysts documenting the proliferation of border controls amidst the global War on Terror have highlighted recent extensions of state sovereignty into new geographies. Such shifts are largely driven by Western states’ security concerns as they partner with governments in Africa and other migrant-sending spaces to stem migration. In eastern Ethiopia, however, new dynamics of border securitization have facilitated African politicians’ efforts to ex…
Geopolitical boundaries and urban borderlands in an Ethiopian frontier city
Recent approaches to urban borderlands employ border studies theories to analyze urban socio-spatial differentiation. Such approaches highlight how patterns of segregation generate not only social divisions, but also new interactions and connections. This article moves beyond analytic parallels between geopolitical borders and urban borderlands by tracing connections between changing border regimes and urban landscapes in Africa. Drawing on field…
Is older age more unequal than we think? Estimates from the Survey of Income and Program Participation linked to administrative records
Political Identity as Temporal Collapse: Ethiopian Federalism and Contested Ogaden Histories
Since the 1980s, analyses of African political identities have emphasized identity manipulation as a governance tool. In the Somali Horn of Africa, however, politicians’ efforts to reinvent identities confront rigid understandings of genealogical clanship as a key component of identity and political mobilization. This article explores how government efforts to construct a new ‘Ethiopian–Somali’ identity within Ethiopia’s ethnic-federal system are…
Misrepresenting livestock and crisis in the Horn: A response to Duffield and Stockton
We use information from observation in the Ethiopia–Somalia borderlands and quantitative data on livestock exports from the Somali Horn of Africa to refute Duffield and Stockton’s argument that livestock exports from the Horn to the Persian Gulf states originate on the front lines of what they term the ‘permanent war’ in Somalia. Duffield and Stockton’s contribution to discussions of violence and capitalism offers a creative twist on Marxist theo…
The Afterlives of Segmentary Lineage: (Post-)Structural Theory and Postcolonial Politics in the Horn of Africa
Segmentary lineage theory fell out of favor in cultural anthropology during the 1980s. However, the core ideas of segmentary lineage have continued to shape political mobilization as well as political analysis in Africa long after the theory’s supposed death. This article analyzes how and why the framework of segmentary lineage has endured as a potent means of describing and experiencing politics in the Somali-inhabited Horn of Africa. It theoriz…
Decentralization and diaspora capture: Transnationalism, autocracy, and hybrid power in federal Ethiopia
This article analyzes how transnational actors navigate the tensions between federal policy, more localized power structures, and informal forms of authority in Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State (SRS). The concept of ‘diaspora capture’ foregrounds the efforts of state officials and transnational elites to take control of processes through which diaspora identities and patterns of coordination are formed and negotiated within webs of kinship and ec…
The border as temporal horizon: A borderlands massacre and the contested futures of federalism in eastern Ethiopia
In 1995, a coalition of former rebel groups redrew Ethiopia's map, establishing an ethnic-federal system. By 2017, internal border conflicts signalled federalism's potential unravelling. This article analyses expectations about federalism's future among Somalis in Ethiopia, drawing on anthropologies of time to understand how everyday processes of border-making orient around the 'future in the present'. Anthropologists and historians concerned wit…
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (6 works) · Somali (6 works)