Asafa Jalata
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Research Agenda
Professor Jalata’s research agenda is focused on investigating and understanding the dynamic interplay between the racialized/ethnicized and exploitative global and regional economic structures and the human agencies of the colonized/ indigenous peoples. He has been identifying and explaining the chains of historical and political economic forces shaping racial/ ethnonational inequality, development and under-development, and national and social movements on global, regional, and local levels. Specifically, for the last twenty years, he has been researching and exploring the relationship between the colonization and incorporation of Oromia, the Oromo country, into the Ethiopian Empire and the global capitalist system and the development of the Oromo national movement.
To link his regional research activities with his larger research agenda, Professor Jalata has located the Oromo question in the global context. His book, Oromia & Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868-1992 (2004) (1993, 2005), his edited book, Oromo nationalism and the Ethiopian Democracy: The Search of Freedom and Democracy (1998), and other publications demonstrate the relationship among local, regional, and global issues. He has extended the scope of his research to include the Horn of Africa and North America. His new book, Fighting against the Injustice of the State and Globalization: Comparing the African American and Oromo Movements (2001), and his articles, "Ethnonationalism and the Global ‘Modernizing’ Project" (2001), "Two Liberation Movements Compared: Oromia & Souther Sudan," (2000), “Revisiting the Black Struggle: Lessons for the twenty-first Century,” and “Comparing the African American and the Oromo Movements in the global Context,” Vol. 30, No. 1, 2003: 67-111, illustrate this geographical breadth.
Further, in his new edited book, State Crises, Globalisation, and National Movement in North-East Africa, (2004), he extends his scholarship and expertise beyond Oromia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Black America to the broader geopolitical region and sociocultural area of North-East Africa. He is currently engaged in research to write a book entitled, Faces of Terrorism in the Age of Globalization: From Christopher Columbus to Osma bin Laden. His research pays close attention to the roles of the indigenous peoples in the racialized global capitalist system, and how the agencies of these peoples are affecting the structures and the dynamics of the system. The uniqueness and strength of his contributions are that he seriously engages scholars and politicians of various theoretical orientations to understand the main reasons why subjugated peoples are involved in cultural and political struggles. He has already consolidated his scholarly stature among national and international scholars as a leading sociologist/social scientist in the fields of Oromo and Africana studies. In recognition of his contribution to Oromo scholarship, he received the Oromo Studies Association Award in 2002.
Recent Publications
2008. “Being in and out of Africa: The Impact Duality of Ethiopianism,” The Journal of Black Studies,(forthcoming)
2008. Struggling for social justice in the capitalist world system: the cases of African Americans, Oromos, and Southern and Western Sudanese,” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, National and Culture, pp. 363-388.
2008. “The Place of the Oromo Diaspora in the Oromo National Movement: Lessons from the Agency of ‘Old’ African Diaspora in the US,” Contested Terrain: Essays on Oromo Studies, Ethiopianist Discourse and Politically Engaged Scholarship, edited by Ezekiel Gebissa, (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press).
2007. “Ethiopia on the Fire of Competing Nationalisms: The Oromo People’s Movement, the State, and the West,” Horn of Africa, Volume XXV, pp. 90-134.
2007. “The Place of the Oromo Diaspora in the Oromo National Movement: Lessons from the Agency of Old African Diaspora in the US,” The Northeast Journal of African Studies, Volume, 10:2, pp. 131-160.
2007. “Oromo National Political Leadership: Assessing the Past and Mapping the
Future,” The Journal of Oromo Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, February/March, (With Harwood Schaffer), pp. 79-116.
2007. Oromummaa: Oromo Culture, Identity and Nationalism, (Atlanta, GA: Oromia Publishing Company).
2007. Africa up to Sixteenth Century: Introduction to African Studies, edited with Perry Kyles and Addisu Tolesa, (Boston: Pearson).
2007. Africa since the Sixteenth Century: Introduction to African Studies, edited with Perry Kyles and Addisu Tolesa, (Boston: Pearson).
2006. “Ethnonationalism and the Global ‘Modernizing’ Project,” Globalization and Violence, Part III, edited by Paul W. James, (London: Sage Publications).
2006. “The Oromo Movement and the Crisis of the Ethiopian State,” Arrested
Development in Ethiopia, editors, Seyoum Hameso and Mohammed Hassen, (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press), pp. 279-306.
2006. “Terrorism and Globalization: The Cases of Ethiopia and Sudan,” Terrorism: A New Testament, (Toronto: de Sitter Publications), pp. 79-102.
2006. “The Impact of Ethiopian State Terrorism and Globalization on the Oromo National Movement,” The Journal of Oromo Studies, Vol. 13, nos. 1 & 2: 19-56.
Contact Information
Asafa Jalata
Professor
Ph.D., 1990, State University of New York at Binghamton
The University of Tennessee
912C McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996-0430
Phone: 865-974-7027
E-Mail: ajalata@utk.edu