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Changing Swahili Cultures in a Globalising World: An Approach from Anthropology

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:15-qucosa-137420
Date27 March 2014
CreatorsCaplan, Pat
ContributorsGoldsmiths, University of London, Department of Anthropology, Universität Leipzig, Institut für Afrikanistik
PublisherUniversitätsbibliothek Leipzig
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedoc-type:article
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceSwahili Forum 20 (2013), S. 31-47

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