WHO IS TRUSTED TO LISTEN? A Journey Into Workers’ Narratives and Silences In Ethiopia’s Industrial Parks
WHO IS TRUSTED TO LISTEN?
A Journey Into Workers’ Narratives and Silences In Ethiopia’s Industrial Parks
by Robel Mulat, Dilla University (CFEE Gant 2024)
What happens when workers choose silence over speech? During my fieldwork in Ethiopia’s flagship industrial hub, the Hawassa Industrial Park (HIP)[1], I expected to hear stories of hardship, resilience, and hope from the migrant women employed in its garment factories. Instead, I was met with silence. Some workers lowered their voices and said their opinions were “unimportant.” Others feared retaliation from managers if their words were traced back. A common Ethiopian proverb, “Silence is gold”, seemed to guide their interactions with me. However, silence is not always a virtue in Ethiopia. Two counter-Amharic proverbs: “ካለመናገር ደጅ አዝማችነት ይቀራል” (By remaining silent, one may lose access to higher status or position) and “በሽታውን ያልተናገረ መድሀኒት የለውም” (One who does not speak of their illness finds no medicine) challenge the moral elevation of silence, revealing it instead as a form of social negotiation between speech, power, and vulnerability.
After several weeks of unsuccessful attempts, one worker finally broke the silence. When I gently asked a worker why she disliked interviews, she replied, “Most interviewers only want to hear what they want to hear, not what we want to say.” Her words struck me deeply. I realized that my challenge was not only about collecting data, but about rethinking how research itself could create safe, trustworthy spaces for expression. Such moments forced me to confront an anthropological dilemma: silence, rather than being a void, became an ethnographic text in its own right which is an index of fear, fatigue, and resistance. This turning point led me to seek guidance from a Sidama socio-cultural institution, Cimeeyyete Songo, the council of village elders. Songo (assembly/council) represents moral authority, mediation, and collective ethics, which are values that I found important in my fieldwork in modern industrial spaces. In this blog, I emphasise the continued vitality of indigenous (community-centred) institutions in urban geography and explore their potential to address the on-going methodological crisis.
Methodological challenge: Beyond traditional interviews
My doctoral research, conducted in Hawassa from November 2022 to August 2024, examines the realities of life and work in the HIP. Built by China, it is one of 11 Industrial Parks constructed nationwide, costing over $250 million. The HIP produces garments for brands like Calvin Klein, Izod, and Tommy Hilfiger, as well as manufacturers from the UK, France, India, Taiwan, and China. These foreign firms bring in expatriate technical and managerial staffs, who typically occupy the senior positions. Inaugurated on July 13, 2016, by April 2024, the HIP employed around 22,000 people. Young, unmarried, semi-skilled rural women make up the largest segment of the labour force, accounting for 80-90% of operators, quality controllers, and packers.
My initial methodological approach relied on conventional ethnographic tools: semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion, and participant observation. Yet in the neighbourhoods where workers lived, these methods quickly began to falter. Workers met my questions with hesitation, sometimes silence. They deeply distrusted outsiders, including researchers, NGOs, officials, and journalists. Many individuals had previously shared their stories, particularly regarding low wages, unhealthy working conditions, and challenging urban life, only to witness no change. Others feared that speaking openly might bring trouble from managers or local officials.
In anthropological terms, this encounter with silence invited me to reconsider the ethics of representation and the asymmetry of power between researcher and participant. It reveals how global industrial structures intersect with local moral worlds that produce both economic precarity and epistemic fatigue (a weariness toward being studied without being heard)[2]. In that environment, I encountered three challenges that I could not resolve on my own. First, Access: how to enter workers’ homes and neighbourhoods. Second, Trust: how to overcome the scepticism created by past experiences that felt exploitative. Finally, Representation: how do I give voice to those who are often unheard without replicating the very structures of silencing that I aim to critique?
The answer came unexpectedly through a casual conversation with a local research assistant, whose father was a respected member of the Songo. He explained that Chimeyye (noble persons) still met regularly in urban neighbourhoods to mediate disputes, protect community members, and advise the youth in Hawassa.
The Sidama people, one of Ethiopia’s over 85 ethnic groups, have a concept known as Seera (customary legal system). As explored by Aadland (2002),[3] this system comprises local cultural norms and codes that regulate the communal social structure and interactions. Songo is a typical social institution in Sidama which have played a great role to maintain peace and security within a given community. The justice of Sidama/conflict resolution mechanism takes place with four levels of councils that deliberate and decide on matters of societal affairs which show the democratic nature of the system. It includes ascending from lower to high: Cimeeyyete Songo’s or Olluu Songo (the lowest), Ayidu Songo (medium) and Garote Songo (highest unit of elders’ council).
I focus on the Cimeeyyete Songo in particular, where all village elders meet many times to discuss issues mainly related with conflicts at family, neighbourhood or community levels. Crucially, they also had direct relationships with many workers as landlords, guardians, elders, or neighbours. This insight transformed my fieldwork. By collaborating with Cimeeyyete Songo elders, I gained credibility that I could not have earned alone. The elders introduced me to tenants, guaranteed for my presence, and reassured workers that their voices would be respected. They also helped me navigate delicate gendered dynamics: for example, by inviting their wives and daughters to speak with female tenants who were hesitant to talk directly with me.
As a result, the Songo became both a moral compass and a methodological bridge that allowed me to translate anthropological engagement into culturally legitimate practice. One moment illustrates this shift vividly. Aster[4], a young migrant woman from Sidama, had been working in the HIP for two years. Recently, she became unexpectedly pregnant and attempted an abortion. It was only by chance that a member of the Songo, who was also her landlord, discovered her condition and saved her life. After she recovered, the Cimessa (noble person) gently encouraged her to talk. Slowly, Aster and her two roommates began to open up. They spoke of bread and onions that had doubled in price, of wages that could not cover rent, and of how life in Hawassa had turned out to be far harsher than they had imagined. These testimonies, voiced under the protection of Cimeeyyete Songo, revealed the everyday consequences of global shocks፡ such as COVID-19, Ethiopia’s suspension from Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade privileges and of local inflation pressing down on the most vulnerable.
Without the Chimeyye presence, such testimonies might never have surfaced. The collaboration not only granted me access but also reshaped the power dynamics of fieldwork, turning interviews into collective conversations where trust could grow. In this way, the Cimeeyyete Songo functioned as what anthropologist Veena Das calls an “ethical infrastructure” which is a localized mechanism through which suffering becomes speakable and shared.
Lessons Learned
This experience taught me three important lessons. First, collaboration as a method: although indigenous institutions like Cimeeyyete Songo are often seen as relevant only in rural/pastoralist settings, they remain highly significant in urban contexts as well. Far from being cultural footnotes, they can actively shape the research process, creating ethical spaces where genuine dialogue becomes possible. This collaboration redefines ethnographic authority not only as an individual researcher’s possession. It is a matter of collective achievement embedded in local legitimacy.
Second, workers only opened up when they felt confident that their words mattered and would not be misused. The elders’ moral authority was crucial in building that trust, acting as a bridge between researcher and community. Third, voice as relationship: the stories I collected did not emerge from simple questioning; they unfolded through sustained, reciprocal relationships, where workers, elders, and I all played a part in shaping the conversation.
Collaborating with Cimeeyyete Songo taught me that silence is not emptiness, it is a form of protection, a survival strategy in precarious circumstances. To “break” the wall of silence ethically, researchers must first ask who is trusted to listen. In my case, the answer lay in the authority of local elders who have long mediated conflict and safeguarded dignity in Sidama communities. As the above proverbs remind us, silence can preserve dignity, but it can also conceal pain. However, words become a kind of healing, a social medicine when spoken within trusted moral spaces, in which another Sidama proverb confirmed this ‘Halaale coyi’ne hashshiwa gala woyyitanno’ (Tell the truth and spend the night).
My fieldwork in Hawassa shows how indigenous institutions play a key role in shaping the ethical approach to research. For scholars, it is a reminder that collaborative ethnography is not just about ‘‘joint ownership of data’’ but about reshaping relationships of power, trust, and representation in the very process of knowledge-making. In sum, I argue that collaborative ethnography has always existed in some form, place, or time. Yet, indigenous-led collaborative ethnography is especially critical, offering a pathway to address the crises of representation and legitimation, particularly by amplifying the voices of marginalized and vulnerable groups. Thus, when we let local authority guide our research process, we able to move from extraction to co-creation which turn silence into knowledge and ethnography into an act of shared care (ethnography of care).
Notes
[1] Recognizing the need for greater local investment, the Ethiopian government reclassified Industrial Parks as Special Economic Zones on April 18, 2024.
[2] See for details: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/epistemic-exhaustion-and-the-retention-of-power/D53FD093288CDC9DAAB02DE4C0740ACE
[3] Aadland, O. (2002). Sera: traditionalism or Living Democratic Values? Case studies among the Sidama in Southern Ethiopia. Ethiopia, the challenge of Democracy from Below, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Stockholm, 29-45.
[4] Participants are referred to by pseudonyms to protect their privacy.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Secrétaire Scientifique (17 décembre 2025). WHO IS TRUSTED TO LISTEN? A Journey Into Workers’ Narratives and Silences In Ethiopia’s Industrial Parks. UN ŒIL SUR LA CORNE / AN EYE ON THE HORN. Consulté le 16 janvier 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15d56





