African Voices, African Lives: Personal Narratives from a Swahili Village - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415137241 ISBN 13: 9780415137249

Publisher: Routledge, 1997

Synopsis

African Voices, African Lives explores the world of 'Mohammed', a swahili peasant living on Mafia Island, Tanzania. Through his own words - some written, some spoken - and those of his relatives, including his ex-wife and one of his daughters, he enables us to see the world through his eyes, including the invisisble world of spirits which plays a significant role in his life. This information is gathered by Pat Caplan, the anthropologist, over almost three decades of talking and writing to each other. She acts not only as translator and editor, but also as interpreter, bringing in her own knowledge gathered from field data as well as comparative material from other anthropological work.
By utilising a mixture of styles - narrative and life history, ethnographic observation, and the diary kept by Mohammed at the anthropologist's bequest, African Voices African Lives will make an important contribution to current debates in anthropology by grappling with issues raised by 'personal narratives', authorial authority, and with refexivity.

About this title

About the Author:

Pat Caplan is Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmith's College, University of London, and is author of Gendered Fields (1993).

Review:

In this book, Caplan offers a nuanced response to the 'crisis of representation' loudly decried in the mid-1980s that problematized ethnographic author-ity and advocated the decolonization of anthropological writing. Relinquishing authorship to those whose voices had been captured and squeezed into theoretical models irrespective of fit offered an ethical solution, it was argued, to the problem Journal of Asian And African Studies.
...the book remains an exciting experiment in ethnographic representation and provides a vivid glimpse into the lives of three complex and often contradictory Swahili individuals.
–Africa Today, July-Dec, 1998

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0415137241
• ISBN 13: 9780415137249
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 284
• Editor: Caplan Pat