Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890-1945 (Eastern African Series)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The first decades of the twentieth century were years of dramatic change in Zanzibar, a time when the social, economic, and political lives of island residents were in an incredible flux framed by the abolition of slavery, the introduction of colonialism, and a tide of urban migration. Pastimes and Politics explores the era from the perspective of the urban poor, highlighting the numerous and varied ways that recently freed slaves and other immigrants to town struggled to improve their individual and collective lives and to create a sense of community in the new environment. In this study Laura Fair explores a range of cultural and social practices that gave expression to slaves' ideas of emancipation, and describes how such ideas and practices were gendered.

SYNOPSIS

To illustrate how marginal members of society actualized emancipation at both the ideological and practical levels, Fair (history, U. of Oregon) explores the often dramatic transformations in personal identities that were negotiated after slavery ended in 1897 on the east African island. She emphasizes the importance of popular culture as a central stage on which these new identities were played out before a range of diverse audiences.