Fadhi Ku Dirir: Oral Deliberation Across Media Epochs
This published journal article traces the Somali institution of fadhi ku dirir, structured, confrontational oral debate, from colonial-era oral poetry through radio, television, and contemporary social media. It examines how oral deliberative traditions adapt to digital infrastructures rather than being displaced by them, a core empirical demonstration of the Generative Social Structure framework's account of oral deliberation as a persistent mechanism of governance and meaning-making.
Xeer and Customary Governance
The Xeer legal system, Somalia's customary law tradition, is one of the empirical anchors of the forthcoming monograph Persistence Through Rupture: The Generative Social Structure. Alongside the Borama Conference and mobile money ecosystems across East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, Xeer demonstrates how distributed trust and collective responsibility organise social and economic life independent of, and sometimes despite, formal state institutions.
Comparative Reach
The research programme's empirical centre is Somalia, with comparative probes into Kenya, Egypt, Yemen, South Sudan, and the Arabian Peninsula, examining how these mechanisms of persistence operate across different post-colonial and digital contexts. See the GSS Framework page for the full theoretical architecture, and the Kenya Governance & Political Advisory page for how the Kenya comparative case informs advisory work.