Ecopoetics of Place

Dibaba analyzes songs and personal experience narratives of suffering and loss due to a history of territorial expropriation, environmental devastation, and the social exclusion of the Oromo people from their homeland. He argues that Finfinne, now known as Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, is a broken place, ravaged by war, famine, and pollution. Dibaba highlights the ways the Oromo understand their ecological reality and use expressive culture to sustain their emotional resilience. Recognizing that attachments to place involve memories and practices of human sociality as well as human-nonhuman experiences, he argues that reclaiming a broken place involves a form of socioecological rescue that heals and stewards both the land and the people, and he appeals to folklorists to study expressive culture in relation to environmental and social justice.