This article considers what might be meant by Swahili cultures and Swahili identities. It regards neither concept as fixed, but as constituting a repertoire from which people choose strategically, depending not only upon location and historical time, but also upon social context. The processes of constituting cultures and identities are part of the making of meaning, a process in which, as will be seen, there are important continuities, ruptures and contradictions. With its attention to detail and its ability to give voice to the local, ethnography plays an important role in understanding the construction of both cultures and identities. In this paper, ethnographic examples are drawn both from my own fieldwork on Mafia Island, Tanzania, begun in 1965, and from the work of other anthropologists and scholars who have carried out research on the East African coast and islands.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:15-qucosa-137420 |
| Date | 27 March 2014 |
| Creators | Caplan, Pat |
| Contributors | Goldsmiths, University of London, Department of Anthropology, Universität Leipzig, Institut für Afrikanistik |
| Publisher | Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:article |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Swahili Forum 20 (2013), S. 31-47 |
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