Proposed by: Amsale Alemu and Teferi Tafa
Panel Type: Memorial / Scholarly Tribute Track: African Indigenous Governance & Politics of Knowledge
Rationale
Professor Asmarom Legesse (1936–2026) stands among the most consequential social scientists Africa produced in the twentieth century. His landmark Gada: Three Approaches to the Study of African Society (1973) and Oromo Democracy (2000) reframed the Oromo Gada system, one of humanity’s most sophisticated indigenous governance orders , as a genuine constitutional democracy predating many Western equivalents. His advocacy was instrumental in the 2016 UNESCO inscription of the Gada system on the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This memorial panel honors his legacy not merely as tribute but as intellectual continuation: assessing what he built, what remains unfinished, and where Oromo and African studies must go next.
The panel gives the ASA a formal occasion to honor one of its most important intellectual figures while advancing live debates around indigenous governance, decolonial epistemology, and the relationship between scholarly production and political advocacy. It brings together anthropology, political science, law, and literary studies in rare interdisciplinary space , and speaks directly to the ASA’s commitments around centering African scholarly voices and taking indigenous knowledge systems seriously as theory, not merely as ethnographic object.
Please send a 200-word abstract and contact information to Teferi Tafa tafenug@gmail.com and Amy Alemu Amsale.Alemu@howard.edu by Saturday, March 14.
Honoring a Giant of African Scholarship: Asmarom Legesse and the Intellectual Legacy of Gada and Oromo Studies
