Download or read book Choice and Constraint in a Swahili Community written by Ann Patricia Caplan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1975, this book examines property and power relations in a Swahili village on Mafia Island off Tanzania. It focuses on the cognatic descent groups which are important in many areas of village life such as land-holding, marriage, residence, Islamic activities and spirit possession cults. Some anthropologists have contended that groups with multiple membership cannot be viable social units, but this book shows that such a system can actually work. In showing how the cognatic descent groups actually operate, both an ideology of descent group membership and also numerical material about patterns of choice are presented. This involves the construction of both mechanical and statistical models, as well as a decision model to discuss the constraints governing choices.
Download or read book Muted Memories written by Jan Lindström and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of porters carried ivory every year from the African interior to Bagamoyo, a port town at the Indian Ocean. In the opposite direction, they carried millions of meters of cloth, manufactured in the USA, Europe, and India. This book examines the centrality of the caravan trade, both culturally and economically, to Bagamoyo’s development and cosmopolitan character, while also exploring how this history was silenced when Bagamoyo was instead branded as a slave route town in 2006 in an attempt to qualify it for the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Download or read book Gender Family and Work in Tanzania written by Colin Creighton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2000. The essays in this volume explore the changing nature of family and gender relations in contemporary Tanzania. Particular attention is paid to the social construction of marriage and to the interplay of family life and gender relations with economic processes and forms of work. Many of the papers are based upon recent ethnographic and survey research; others provide a much needed historical perspective upon the change in family patterns and upon the ways in which gender and family relations are shaped by, and in turn help to shape, wider social institutions and processes.
Download or read book Rough Waters written by Christine J. Walley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rough Waters explores one of the most crucial problems of the contemporary era--struggles over access to, and use of, the environment. It combines insights from anthropology, history, and environmental studies, mounting an interdisciplinary challenge to contemporary accounts of "globalization." The book focuses on The Mafia Island Marine Park, a national park in Tanzania that became the center of political conflict during its creation in the mid-1990s. The park, reflecting a new generation of internationally sponsored projects, was designed to encourage environmental conservation as well as development. Rather than excluding residents, as had been common in East Africa's mainland wildlife parks, Mafia Island was intended to represent a new type of national park that would encourage the participation of area residents and incorporate their ideas. While the park had been described in the project's general management plan as "for the people and by the people," residents remained excluded from the most basic decisions made about the park. The book details the day-to-day tensions and alliances that arose among Mafia residents, Tanzanian government officials, and representatives of international organizations, as each group attempted to control and define the park. Walley's analysis argues that a technocentric approach to conservation and development can work to the detriment of both poorer people and the environment. It further suggests that the concept of the global may be inadequate for understanding this and other social dramas in the contemporary world.
Download or read book Understanding Disputes written by Pat Caplan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-22 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are disputes ever really resolved, or do people need to find ways of accommodating them and living with the consequences? Can dispute settlement procedures at the local level be transferred to wider environments? In attempting to answer these questions, some of the foremost specialists in the anthropology of law and disputing behaviour examine how people in a variety of social settings, ranging from Ireland to East Africa, deal with quarrels and seek to resolve or accommodate them. This stimulating volume should be of interest to anyone concerned about the increase in conflict in many parts of the world.
Download or read book Where Humans and Spirits Meet written by Kjersti Larsen and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zanzibar, an island off the East African coast, with its Muslim and Swahili population, offers rich material for this study of identity, religion, and multiculturalism. This book focuses on the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town and the relationships created between humans and spirits; it provides a way to apprehend how society is constituted and conceived and, thus, discusses Zanzibari understandings of what it means to be human.
Download or read book On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World written by Philip Gooding and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-04 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first interdisciplinary history of Lake Tanganyika and of eastern Africa's relationship with the wider Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth century. Philip Gooding deploys diverse source materials, including oral, climatological, anthropological, and archaeological sources, to ground interpretations of the better-known, European-authored archive in local epistemologies and understandings of the past. Gooding shows that Lake Tanganyika's shape, location, and distinctive lacustrine environment contributed to phenomena traditionally associated with the history of the wider Indian Ocean World being negotiated, contested, and re-imagined in particularly robust ways. He adds novel contributions to African and Indian Ocean histories of urbanism, the environment, spirituality, kinship, commerce, consumption, material culture, bondage, slavery, Islam, and capitalism. African peoples and environments are positioned as central to the histories of global economies, religions, and cultures.
Download or read book Gendered Fields written by Diane Bell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtually all anthropologists undertaking fieldwork experience emotional difficulties in relating their own personal culture to the field culture. The issue of gender arises because ethnographers do fieldwork by establishing relationships, and this is done as a person of a particular age, sexual orientation, belief, educational background, ethnic identity and class. In particular it is done as men and women. Gendered Fields examines and explores the progress of feminist anthropology, the gendered nature of fieldwork itself, and the articulation of gender with other aspects of the self of the ethnographer.
Download or read book Essays in African Land Law written by Robert Home (College teacher) and published by PULP. This book was released on 2011 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Anthropology and Autobiography written by Judith Okely and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1992-07-02 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropological writings by anthropologists in the field have long been a valuable tool to the profession. But until now, the theoretical implications of its use have not been fully explored. Anthropology and Autobiography provides unique insights into the fieldwork, autobiographical materials and/or textual critiques of anthropologists, many of whose ethnographies are already familiar. It considers the role of the anthropologist as fieldworker and writer, examining the ways in which nationality, age, gender, and personal history influence the anthropologist's behavior towards the individuals he is observing. This volume also contributes to debates about reflexivity and the political responsibility of the anthropologist, who, as a participant, has traditionally made only stylized appearances in the academic text. The contributors examine their work among peoples in Africa, Japan, the Caribbean, Greece, Shetland, England, indigenous Australia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. Autobiography is developed alongside political, intellectual, and historical changes. The anthropologists confront and examine issues of racism, reciprocity and friendships. Anthropology and Autobiography will appeal to anthropologists and social scientists interested in ethnographic approaches, the self, reflexivity, qualitative methodology, and the production of texts.
Download or read book African Women in the Development Process written by Nicki Nelson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1981. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book The Way the World Is written by Marc J. Swartz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marc Swartz takes us for the first time into the homes and neighborhoods of the Swahili in the East African port of Mombasa. At the same time he develops a new model for the operation and transmission of culture. In asking how cultural elements influence the social behavior of those who do not share them as well as of those who do, Swartz points to the mediation of status. The many types of status available to individuals provide guidelines that help explain, for example, why the broadly shared elements of Swahili culture (Islamic religion or the nuclear family) do not alone translate into behavior. The Way the World Is demonstrates in a highly original way how culture "works." This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.
Download or read book Horn and Crescent written by Randall L. Pouwels and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-06 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major historical study of Islam among the Swahili.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Islam in Sub Saharan Africa written by Timothy Insoll and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-03 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book Popobawa written by Katrina Daly Thompson and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Bravely takes on . . . not the legendary shapeshifting creature spoken about sporadically on the Swahili coast of Tanzania, but rather popobawa discourse.” —The Journal of Modern African Studies Since the 1960s, people on the islands off the coast of Tanzania have talked about being attacked by a mysterious creature called Popobawa, a shapeshifter often described as having an enormous penis. Popobawa’s recurring attacks have become a popular subject for stories, conversation, gossip, and humor that has spread far beyond East Africa. Katrina Daly Thompson shows that talk about Popobawa becomes a tool that Swahili speakers use for various creative purposes such as subverting gender segregation, advertising homosexuality, or discussing female sexuality. By situating Popobawa discourse within the social and cultural world of the Swahili Coast as well as the wider world of global popular culture, Thompson demonstrates that uses of this legend are more diverse and complex than previously thought and provides insight into how women and men communicate in a place where taboo, prohibition, and restraint remain powerful cultural forces. “While Popobawa surely belong to one of the most interesting African legends, Katrina Daly Thompson, instead of asking where the story originated, asks about how people talk about this trickster and what these conversations really mean.” —Claudia Boehme, University of Trier “A well-researched and well-documented addition to the body of knowledge on local legends and their global manifestations.” —Journal of Folklore Research “Thompson’s movement between local and global discourses demonstrates the importance of a phenomenon that could otherwise be viewed as exotic ethnographic trivia, while her theoretical orientation makes the text as relevant to linguistic anthropologists as to African studies scholars.” —African Studies Review
Download or read book A Modern History of Tanganyika written by John Iliffe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1979-05-10 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive and fully documented history of modern Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania).
Download or read book Holy Water and Evil Spirits written by Katharina Wilkens and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2011 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tanzania, the Marian Faith Healing Ministry offers Catholic healing rituals under the patronage of the Virgin Mary. Exorcism and a special water service are central to the healing process. People bring physical, spiritual, and social afflictions before the group's leader, Felicien Nkwera. Combining the perspectives of the study of religions and medical anthropology, this book analyzes Nkwera's pastoral texts and the personal healing narratives of the members. Thus, a complex image of the healing process is created and framed within its Tanzanian interreligious context and its global conservative Catholic context. (Series: Beitrage zur Afrikaforschung - Vol. 47)
