■PREFACE

This Special Issue of African Study Monographs consists of 18 chapters written by students at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies (ASAFAS) at Kyoto University, Japan, and the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology (SOSA) at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. The studies were initially presented at the international workshop on the “Environment, Livelihoods, and Local Praxis in Asia and Africa” held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 20-23 October 2003, which was jointly organized by ASAFAS and SOSA. Some 30 participants from Kyoto University and a host of Ethiopian scholars attended the meeting. The event was more than an academic workshop and involved a weeklong on-site educational tour of various research sites in Ethiopia. Twelve of the 22 papers read for the workshop and 10 of the 18 chapters included in this volume are about Ethiopia.

Masayoshi SHIGETA & GEBRE Yntiso