Iain Walker

Arthur Chan

Stephanie Rose Montesanti

Improving Disaster Health Outcomes and Resilience Through Rapid Research: Implications for Public Health Policy and Practice

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.

Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography

The island of Ngazidja lies at the southern end of the monsoon wind system and its inhabitants, the Wangazidja, have participated in the trading networks of the Indian Ocean for two millennia. The enduring contacts between the Wangazidja and their trading partners have subjected them to a variety of social and cultural influences—from the Swahili coast, from the African hinterland, from the Arabian peninsula, from Indonesia and, more recently, from Europe. This book looks at the strategies called into play by Wangazidja in negotiating this encounter with the outside world; it discusses how they incorporate this variety of influences into their own social and cultural modes of practice while all the time remaining (in the words of one observer) “authentic.” Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, René Girard and Michael Taussig, the author develops the theoretical concept of mimesis in an analysis of these transformations, increasingly relevant in the contemporary context of globalization, showing how firmly anchored social structures are able to incorporate what seem to be practices imitative of the Other.

Constructing Identities in a Connected World

Becoming the Other, Being Oneself

Heather J. Smith

The relative deprivation construct has been widely used in the social sciences to explain phenomena from experiencing psychosomatic stress to participating in urban riots. It is currently a valuable tool in research, being used especially to understand processes of social identity and responses to disadvantage by both disadvantaged minorities and privileged majorities. Originally published in 2001, this book assembles chapters by leading relative deprivation researchers in order to present comprehensive synthesis of knowledge. Featuring integrative theoretical and empirical work from social psychology, sociology, and psychology, the book provides a highly detailed reference work. It is relevant to researchers in intergroup relations, prejudice, racism, social identity, group processes, social comparison, collective behavior, and social movements. The book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the topic and its practical application.

Specification, Development, and Integration

Relative Deprivation

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.

Iain Walker

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