Awra Amba RJ 300612 EN - Contacter un comité local d'Attac

Awra Amba, a current experiment of utopian socialism
2007, as the report was published in March, 2008. This survey has used a questionnaire with
open and closed questions, conducted with 88 community members (53 men and 35 women). 12
community members, including the founder, were in addition interviewed more in depth.
Finally, several focus groups were organized, each of them of 6 to 8 people, coming from the
community or the neighbouring ones. The number of interviewed people was therefore very
high, without doubt nearby 130.
- The 2009 master report in peace sciences of Merhatsidk Mekonnen Abayneh (Mekonnen, 2009),
dealing with the mediation methods of family disputes in Awra Amba, based on a field survey in
November 2008 (p. 13), whose duration was not given, but apparently one month at the most.
This survey consisted especially in an interview of 9 young adults of both sexes, married and
with one or several children, the three members of the grievance-handling and mediating
committee of the village, the community leader and founder, and 8 members of legal and social
bodies of the woreda (equivalent to a department) of Fogera and of the kebele (equivalent to a
commune) of Woji-Arba-Amba (p. 71 and 93-94). The number of interviewed people was
therefore quite limited (21 people).
In addition to these main sources, we consider the article of a news agency (IPS, 2010), a website of
Awra Amba (Awraamba, nd), and the accounts of à French woman in 2011 and 2012 (Crespo, 2011;
2012).
1.2. Source criticism
The language is without doubt a potential source of mistake, since the huge majority of the members
of Awra Amba and neighbouring communities speak only Amharic and not English; only some of
them speak English, but in a rough way. But the English of teachers and regional authorities is of
good level. The authors who conducted surveys whose synthesis is given here are partly Ethiopian
and then speak Amharic; It is the case of around half of about fifteen journalists, professionals or
visitors whose synthesis we had made, and it is above all the case of the four master students who
give us most of the information. The information collected by sources not speaking Amharic might
be badly understood, and badly interpreted. Otherwise, documents we use are all in English, except
for three of them in French. It is especially the case of Ethiopian sources, whose English is not the
mother language and who can master it more or less. It is difficult to know that, especially for the
master students, the professors in charge of them usually correcting the English of the texts of their
students. Some reports are nevertheless written in hesitating English, as sometimes this one by
Yassin. The languages are therefore problematic for most of work sources.
Some of the research studies we synthesize here do not obey the standards of scientific research:
- The indication of sources providing transparency: many references written in his text by
Yassin (2008) are not given in the literature list;
- Ethic respect: Mekonnen (2009) mentions the names of private people he interviewed and
reproduce very personal data which are not made anonymous; Yassin (2008) copies in full
paragraphs of Atnafu (2005) without quoting him;
- The balanced synthesis of existing literature where the author can't deduce own conclusion
without solid basis of references from: In his initial bibliographical synthesis on very wide
subjects like development, globalisation, environment or knowledge, Yassin (2008) lists
peremptory and decisive claims;
- The non induction of responses through questions asked to interviewed people: Yassin (2008)
administers a questionnaire quite badly built, as many questions induce the response: for
instance, the question "Do you believe that individual rights are respected in the community?
1.Yes 2.No" induces rather a positive response (Yassin, 2008, p. 163);
- The logic which induces the conclusions of a study are based on the study itself: A part of
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