Contemporary Issues In Swahili Ethnography

Author : Iain Walker
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2018-10-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781315280837

Get Book

Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography by Iain Walker Pdf

The term ‘Swahili’ describes the Muslim peoples of the East African coast, speakers of Kiswahili or closely related languages, who have historically filled roles as middlemen and merchants, the cosmopolitan products of a trading economy between Africa and the Indian Ocean world. This collection brings together anthropologists working on the greater Swahili world and the issues it confronts, dealing with societies from southern Somalia, northern Mozambique and the Comoro Islands, to Zanzibar and Mafia. The authors discuss a range of contemporary issues such as the shifting roles of Islam on the mainland coast; consumerism, conservation, memory and belonging in Zanzibar; how a Muslim society deals with HIV/AIDS; social change, development and political strategies in the Comoros; and Swahili women in London. The diversity of these themes reflects the diversity of the Swahili world itself: despite a cohesive cultural identity built upon shared practices, religious beliefs and language, the challenges facing Swahili people are multiple and complex. This book comprises articles originally published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies along with some new chapters.

Author : Julia Verne
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Swahili-speaking peoples
ISBN : 3515101659

Get Book

Living Translocality by Julia Verne Pdf

Mobility not only challenges the everyday lives of millions of people, it also challenges scientific understandings of society, culture and space. Based on long-term mobile ethnographic research connecting Zanzibar, the Tanzanian mainland, Mombasa, Dubai and London, this volume takes up this challenge by exploring the translocal space emerging around contemporary Swahili trade. Examining translocality as a lived experience, the book succeeds in refining often overly abstract notions of mobile settings and relational space.

Author : Iain Walker
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 293 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2019-08-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780197507568

Get Book

Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea by Iain Walker Pdf

Many people today have never heard of the Comoros, but these islands were once part of a prosperous regional trading economy that stretched halfway around the world. A key node in the trading networks of the Indian Ocean, the Comoros prospered by exchanging slaves and commodities with Arab and Indian merchants. By the sixteenth century, the archipelago served as an important supply point on the route from Europe to Asia. The twentieth century brought the establishment of French colonial rule and a plantation economy. Since declaring its independence in 1975, the Comoros has been blighted by more than twenty coups, a radical revolutionary government and a mercenary regime. Today, the island nation suffers chronic mismanagement and relies on remittances from a diaspora community in France. Nonetheless, the Comoros is largely peaceful and culturally vibrant-- connected to the outside world in the internet age, but, at the same time, still slightly apart. Iain Walker traces the history and unique culture of these enigmatic islands, from their first settlement by Africans, Arabs and Austronesians, through their heyday within the greater Swahili world, to their decline as a forgotten outpost of the French colonial empire.

Author : Pat Caplan
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2003-09-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781134776054

Get Book

African Voices, African Lives by Pat Caplan Pdf

African Voices, African Lives explores the world of 'Mohammed', a swahili peasant living on Mafia Island, Tanzania. Through his own words - some written, some spoken - and those of his relatives, including his ex-wife and one of his daughters, he enables us to see the world through his eyes, including the invisisble world of spirits which plays a significant role in his life. This information is gathered by Pat Caplan, the anthropologist, over almost three decades of talking and writing to each other. She acts not only as translator and editor, but also as interpreter, bringing in her own knowledge gathered from field data as well as comparative material from other anthropological work. By utilising a mixture of styles - narrative and life history, ethnographic observation, and the diary kept by Mohammed at the anthropologist's bequest, African Voices African Lives will make an important contribution to current debates in anthropology by grappling with issues raised by 'personal narratives', authorial authority, and with refexivity.

Author : Kai Kresse
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2007-05-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780748631735

Get Book

Philosophising in Mombasa by Kai Kresse Pdf

Philosophising in Mombasa provides an approach to the anthropological study of philosophical discourses in the Swahili context of Mombasa, Kenya. In this historically established Muslim environment, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, philosophy is investigated as social discourse and intellectual practice, situated in everyday life. This is done from the perspective of an 'anthropology of philosophy', a project which is spelled out in the opening chapter. Entry-points and guidelines for the ethnography are provided by discussions of Swahili literary genres, life histories, and social debates. From here, local discourses of knowledge are described and analysed. The social environment and discursive dynamics of the Old Town are portrayed, firstly, by means of following and contextualising informal discussions among neighbours and friends at daily meeting points in the streets; and secondly, by presenting and discussing in-depth case studies of local intellectuals and their contributions to moral and intellectual debates within the community. Taking recurrent internal discussions on social affairs, politics, and appropriate Islamic conduct as a focus, this study sheds light on local practices of critique and reflection. In particular, three local intellectuals (two poets, one Islamic scholar) are portrayed against the background of regional intellectual history, Islamic scholarship, as well as common public debates and private discussions. The three contextual portrayals discuss exemplary issues for the wider field of research on philosophical discourse in Mombasa and the Swahili context on the whole, with reference to the lives and projects of distinct individual thinkers. Ultimately, the study directs attention beyond the regional and the African contexts, towards the anthropological study of knowledge and intellectual practice around the world.

Author : Johannes Fabian
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2008-08-26
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780822381204

Get Book

Ethnography as Commentary by Johannes Fabian Pdf

The Internet allows ethnographers to deposit the textual materials on which they base their writing in virtual archives. Electronically archived fieldwork documents can be accessed at any time by the writer, his or her readers, and the people studied. Johannes Fabian, a leading theorist of anthropological practice, argues that virtual archives have the potential to shift the emphasis in ethnographic writing from the monograph to commentary. In this insightful study, he returns to the recording of a conversation he had with a ritual healer in the Congolese town of Lubumbashi more than three decades ago. Fabian’s transcript and translation of the exchange have been deposited on a website (Language and Popular Culture in Africa), and in Ethnography as Commentary he provides a model of writing in the presence of a virtual archive. In his commentary, Fabian reconstructs his meeting with the healer Kahenga Mukonkwa Michel, in which the two discussed the ritual that Kahenga performed to protect Fabian’s home from burglary. Fabian reflects on the expectations and terminology that shape his description of Kahenga’s ritual and meditates on how ethnographic texts are made, considering the settings, the participants, the technologies, and the linguistic medium that influence the transcription and translation of a recording and thus fashion ethnographic knowledge. Turning more directly to Kahenga—as a practitioner, a person, and an ethnographic subject—and to the questions posed to him, Fabian reconsiders questions of ethnic identity, politics, and religion. While Fabian hopes that emerging anthropologists will share their fieldwork through virtual archives, he does not suggest that traditional ethnography will disappear. It will become part of a broader project facilitated by new media.

Author : Perry Gilmore
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2015-10-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781119101574

Get Book

Kisisi (Our Language) by Perry Gilmore Pdf

Recognized as a finalist for the CAE 2018 Outstanding Book Award! Part historic ethnography, part linguistic case study and part a mother’s memoir, Kisisi tells the story of two boys (Colin and Sadiki) who, together invented their own language, and of the friendship they shared in postcolonial Kenya. Documents and examines the invention of a ‘new’ language between two boys in postcolonial Kenya Offers a unique insight into child language development and use Presents a mixed genre narrative and multidisciplinary discussion that describes the children’s border-crossing friendship and their unique and innovative private language Beautifully written by one of the foremost scholars in child development, language acquisition and education, the book provides a seamless blending of the personal and the ethnographic The story of Colin and Sadiki raises profound questions and has direct implications for many fields of study including child language acquisition and socialization, education, anthropology, and the anthropology of childhood

Author : Mwenda Ntarangwi
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2010-12-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780252035791

Get Book

Reversed Gaze by Mwenda Ntarangwi Pdf

Annotation Illustrating how life circumstances can influence ethnographic fieldwork, Mwenda Ntarangwi uses his experiences as a Kenyan anthropology student & professional anthropologist in the U.S. & Africa as the basis of this study of the Western culture of anthropology.

Author : Russell
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2023-07-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789004672581

Get Book

Communicative Competence in a Minority Group by Russell Pdf

Author : Akbar Keshodkar
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780739175446

Get Book

Tourism and Social Change in Post-Socialist Zanzibar by Akbar Keshodkar Pdf

Notions of ustaarabu, a word expressing “civilization,” and questions of identities in Zanzibar have historically been shaped by the development of Islam and association with littoral societies around the Indian Ocean. The 1964 Revolution marked a break in that history and imposed new notions of African civilization and belonging in Zanzibar. The revolutionary state subsequently introduced tourism and the market economy to maintain its hegemony over Zanzibar. In light of these developments, and with locals facing growing socio-economic marginalization and political uncertainty, Tourism and Social Change in Post-Socialist Zanzibar: Struggles for Identity, Movement, and Civilization examines how Zanzibaris are struggling to move through the local landscape in the post-socialist era and articulate their ideas of belonging in Zanzibar. This book further investigates how movements of Zanzibaris within the emerging and contending social discourses are reconstituting meanings for conceptualizing ustaarabu to define their roots in Zanzibar.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2018-06-26
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789004365988

Get Book

Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean by Anonim Pdf

The book describes the worlds where Swahili is spoken as multi-centred contexts that cannot be thought of as located in a specific coastal area of Kenya or Tanzania. The articles presented discuss a range of geographical areas where Swahili is spoken, from Somalia to Mozambique along the Indian Ocean, in Europe and the US.

Author : University of Michigan. College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Publisher : UM Libraries
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Electronic
ISBN : UOM:39015069204801

Get Book

Bulletin MLSA by University of Michigan. College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Pdf

Author : Lloyd Fallers
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 135 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781351474061

Get Book

The Social Anthropology of the Nation-State by Lloyd Fallers Pdf

The contemporary nation-state is popular in that it rests upon mutual identification between rulers and ruled. Such identification is based upon common primordial qualities that are felt to be ancient, inherent, given, however new they may in fact be: language, territory, culture, race. But the nation-state has also produced far more rigorous authoritarianisms and frequently less tolerance than old empires. Anthropology, the -study of man, - for all the immodesty of its name, has concerned itself almost exclusively with people in small groups: bands, tribal segments, village communities, and, recently, urban neighborhoods, schools, and work places. Social anthropology has been the science of the socio-cultural microcosm and has developed a method and style of inquiry appropriate to this task. This volume uniquely applies the techniques of social anthropology to the study of the nation-state. This discussion of states and their microcosms does not simply celebrate social anthropological research and the understanding it yields, but also illustrates its contribution, in combination with other modes of investigation, to the understanding of contemporary international issues. In particular, Fallers says it is necessary to place the microcosms historically, for those who inhabit them act within history as experienced, both directly by themselves and, at further remove, by their predecessors and contemporaries. This classic volume offers a different perspective for understanding international issues.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 544 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Africa
ISBN : UOM:39015078734640

Get Book

International African Bibliography by Anonim Pdf

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1969
Category : Africa
ISBN : UVA:X030526916

Get Book

African Studies in the Soviet Union by Anonim Pdf