Cooptation, acceptance and resistance in the Somali "everyday"

Karl Sandstrom

pp. 131-145

in: Oliver P. Richmond, Audra Mitchell (eds), Hybrid forms of peace, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

The image of Somalia as a violent and anarchic state of social order has been prevalent in international media and political discourse since the early 1990s. Constant references to the "failed state" not only belie the socio-political orders that have provided social control of the "everyday", Mogadishu being a notable exception, but also ignore the achievements made by sub-state entities in creating and maintaining frameworks of peaceful political interaction.¹ They also disregard the success of the internally controlled peace processes of the North, compared to the failures of the externally controlled processes in the South. This chapter examines how different logics are actuated and employed in the Somali context. External influences have affected Somalia and have contributed to the multiple social "everydays' found within the country. The overarching logic is one of pragmatism and survival, which has produced a context in which externally generated projects are coopted and subverted in the pursuit of localized agendas.