Taifa : making nation and race in urban Tanzania / James R. Brennan.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Brennan, James R., Dr.

Series:

• New African histories series
• New African histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Ethnicity--Tanzania--Dar es Salaam--History.
• Nationalism--Tanzania--Dar es Salaam--History.
• Urbanization--Tanzania--Dar es Salaam--History.
• Urbanization.
• History.
• Nationalism.
• Ethnicity.
• Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)--Race relations--History.
• Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)--Social conditions.
• Tanzania--Dar es Salaam.

Physical Description:

xi, 292 pages : maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens : Ohio University Press, [2012]

Summary:

This book's title, Taifa, is a Swahili word that has been variously translated into English as "nation," or "race." The author, James R. Brennan (history, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), argues convincingly that we should understand it on its own terms. His book looks at the history of taifa in Tanzania, an African country whose culture has long been shaped by African majorities and Indian minorities. While most Western scholars see ideas of race and nation as imposed on Africans by European colonialism and the European and Arab slave trades, Brennan and his Tanzanian informants point out that taifa is an African idea, shaped by relationships between Africans and Indians. Brennan documents how colonial ideas of nation and race interacted with existing ideas of taifa to create modern Dar es Salaam. This book helps Western readers reimagine Africa not as a blank slate onto which slavery and colonialism projected European visions of race and nation, but as groups of people dealing with their own pre-existing visions of otherness: European visions of black Africans, black African visions of Indians, Afro-Indian visions of both others. The book is divided into five chapters: Native and Non-Native, identity and social structure in Dar es Salaam between the wars, the creation of urban entitlement, racial thought and the intellectual foundations of Tanzanian African nationalism, and Nationalist thought, racial caricature, and urban citizenship in postcolonal Tanzania. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Contents:

• Native and non-native: colonial urbanization and the legal foundations of identity
• Identity and social structure in interwar Dar es Salaam
• Posing the urban question: war, state intervention, and the creation of urban entitlement
• Continental shift: civilization, racial thought, and the intellectual foundations of an African nationalism
• Nationalist thought, racial caricature, and urban citizenship in postcolonial Tanzania.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-281) and index.

ISBN:

• 9780821420010
• 0821420011
• 9780821444177
• 0821444174

OCLC:

768800621