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Article: Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda.
- Article from:
- Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
- Article date:
- March 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Royal Anthropological Institute. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Justin Willis originally conceived this project as a study of relations between Mijikenda peoples in Kenya's coastal hinterlands on the one hand, and the Swahili and other residents of the town of Mombasa on the other. Instead it became a 'study of changing concepts of ethnicity', as he discovered that neither of these groups was 'discrete or homogeneous' before the 1930s. The book offers a careful historical analysis, from the mid-1800s to the 1930s, of redefinitions over time of what it meant to be 'Swahili', and of the recent invention of 'Mijikenda' identity. Willis's analysis is informed by contemporary understandings of ethnicity and other forms of identity as ...