Island in the stream : an ethnographic history of Mayotte /
Island in the Stream introduces an original genre of ethnographic history as it follows a community on Mayotte, an east African island in the Mozambique Channel, through eleven periods of fieldwork between 1975 and 2015. Over this forty-year span Mayotte shifted from a declining and neglected coloni...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Toronto ; Buffalo :
University of Toronto Press,
[2018]
|
| Series: | Anthropological horizons.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Island in the Stream introduces an original genre of ethnographic history as it follows a community on Mayotte, an east African island in the Mozambique Channel, through eleven periods of fieldwork between 1975 and 2015. Over this forty-year span Mayotte shifted from a declining and neglected colonial backwater to a full département of the French state. In a highly unusual postcolonial trajectory, citizens of Mayotte demanded this incorporation within France rather than joining the independent republic of the Comoros. The Malagasy-speaking Muslim villagers Michael Lambek encountered in 1975 practiced subsistence cultivation and lived without roads, schools, electricity or running water. Today, they are educated citizens of the European Union who travel regularly to metropolitan France and beyond. Offering a series of ethnographic slices of life across time, Island in the Stream highlights community members' ethical engagement in their own history as they looked to the future, acknowledged the past, and engaged and transformed local forms of sociality, exchange and ritual performance. This is a unique account of the changing horizons and historical consciousness of an African community and an intimate portrait of the inhabitants and their concerns, as well as a glimpse into the changing perspective of the ethnographer. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | xxxi, 334 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781487503918 1487503911 9781487522995 1487522991 |