Rwandans / Jan Czekanowski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Czekanowski, Jan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnology--Rwanda.

Ethnology.

Batwa (African people).

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New Haven, Conn : Human Relations Area Files, 2009.

Summary:

This collection of fifteen documents covers historical, cultural, and economic information on the Rwandans, circa 1895 to 2004. The Rwandan culture has its roots in the precolonial kingdom of Rwanda and encompasses both the population of the modern state of Rwanda and speakers of the Kinyarwanda language in the neighboring Congo and Uganda. The basic and most comprehensive sources in the collection were compiled by the Belgian ethnologist Jacques Maquet in 1949-1957. Maquet discusses the processes and rules that structured Rwandan society into a caste-like political system consisting of cattle owning ruling elites, Tutsi, a farming majority, Hutu, and a forest dwelling hunting minority, Twa. However, his arguments are strongly challenged by the works of three scholars, Mamdani, Catharine Newbury, and David Newbury, who do not view ethnicity as a primordial identity. The collection also includes four documents which, together, provide the earliest available firsthand information on the Rwandans: Czekanowski, who, in 1907-1909, collected a wide variety of information relating to history, language, and arts in the Mpororo region; the now classic work of John Roscoe, a European clergy who traveled extensively in central Africa; and Vanhove, a Belgian colonial administrator and lawyer. Two documents from Christopher Taylor deal with ethnomedicine and diet, and the remaining three deal with the nature of the violence that swept Rwanda in 1994. The Rwandans encompass groups presently known as the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.