Peasant intellectuals : anthropology and history in Tanzania / Steven Feierman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Feierman, Steven, 1940-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shambala language--Political aspects.

Shambala language.

Rain-making rites.

Shambala (African people).

Rites and ceremonies.

Kings and rulers.

Folklore.

Politics and government.

Peasants.

Lushoto District (Tanzania)--Politics and government.

Lushoto District (Tanzania).

Peasants--Tanzania--Lushoto District--Politics and government.

Shambala (African people)--Politics and government.

Shambala (African people)--Kings and rulers--Folklore.

Shambala (African people)--Rites and ceremonies.

Rain-making rites--Tanzania--Lushoto District.

Shambala language--Political aspects--Tanzania--Lushoto District.

Tanzania--Lushoto District.

Physical Description:

xii, 340 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, [1990]

Summary:

Peasant Intellectuals will dramatically alter the perspective from which anthropologists, historians, and political scientists study both cultural systems and rural politics. Based on 25 years of research that includes interviews with hundreds of people from all social levels, Steven Feierman gives us the history of the struggles to define the most basic issues of public discourse in the Shambaa-speaking region of Tanzania. Over the past 150 years ruling chiefs and dissenting peasants have debated what it is that enables some regimes to bring life rather than death, prosperity rather than hunger, justice rather than inequity. Feierman focuses on the role of peasant intellectuals -- men and women who earn their living by farming and who, at crucial historical moments, have organized political movements of the greatest long-term significance. Peasant Intellectuals also demonstrates that peasant society contains a rich body of alternative sources of political language from which future debates can be shaped.

Contents:

2 Tribute and Dependency in Late Nineteenth-Century Shambaai 46

3 Healing the Land and Harming the Land 69

4 Alternative Paths to Social Health in the Precolonial Kingdom 94

5 Colonial Rule and the Fate of the Intellectuals 120

6 Royal Domination and Peasant Resistance, 1947-1957 154

7 The Struggle over Erosion Control: Women's Farming and the Polities of Subsistence 181

8 Gender, Slavery, and Chiefship: Peasant Attempts to Create an Alternative Discourse 204

9 Chiefs and Bureaucrats: Independence and the Fate of the Intellectuals 223

10 Rain in Independent Tanzania: A Drama Remembered but Not Performed 245.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-329) and index.

ISBN:

0299125203

0299125246

OCLC:

21949328