Connecting Continents

In recent decades, the vast and culturally diverse Indian Ocean region has increasingly attracted the attention of anthropologists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and other researchers. Largely missing from this growing body of scholarship, however, are significant contributions by archaeologists and consciously interdisciplinary approaches to studying the region’s past and present. Connecting Continents addresses two important issues: how best to promote collaborative research on the Indian Ocean world, and how to shape the research agenda for a region that has only recently begun to attract serious interest from historical archaeologists. The archaeologists, historians, and other scholars who have contributed to this volume tackle important topics such as the nature and dynamics of migration, colonization, and cultural syncretism that are central to understanding the human experience in the Indian Ocean basin. This groundbreaking work also deepens our understanding of topics of increasing scholarly and popular interest, such as the ways in which people construct and understand their heritage and can make use of exciting new technologies like DNA and environmental analysis. Because it adopts such an explicitly comparative approach to the Indian Ocean, Connecting Continents provides a compelling model for multidisciplinary approaches to studying other parts of the globe. Contributors: Richard B. Allen, Edward A. Alpers, Atholl Anderson, Nicole Boivin, Diego Calaon, Aaron Camens, Saša Čaval, Geoffrey Clark, Alison Crowther, Corinne Forest, Simon Haberle, Diana Heise, Mark Horton, Paul Lane, Martin Mhando, and Alistair Patterson

Connecting Continents: Archaeology and History in the Indian Ocean World

Winner, Society for American Archaeology Book Award In recent decades, the vast and culturally diverse Indian Ocean region has increasingly attracted the attention of anthropologists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and other researchers. Largely missing from this growing body of scholarship, however, are significant contributions by archaeologists and consciously interdisciplinary approaches to studying the region’s past and present. Connecting Continents addresses two important issues: how best to promote collaborative research on the Indian Ocean world, and how to shape the research agenda for a region that has only recently begun to attract serious interest from historical archaeologists. The archaeologists, historians, and other scholars who have contributed to this volume tackle important topics such as the nature and dynamics of migration, colonization, and cultural syncretism that are central to understanding the human experience in the Indian Ocean basin. This groundbreaking work also deepens our understanding of topics of increasing scholarly and popular interest, such as the ways in which people construct and understand their heritage and can make use of exciting new technologies like DNA and environmental analysis. Because it adopts such an explicitly comparative approach to the Indian Ocean, Connecting Continents provides a compelling model for multidisciplinary approaches to studying other parts of the globe. Contributors: Richard B. Allen, Edward A. Alpers, Atholl Anderson, Nicole Boivin, Diego Calaon, Aaron Camens, Saša Čaval, Geoffrey Clark, Alison Crowther, Corinne Forest, Simon Haberle, Diana Heise, Mark Horton, Paul Lane, Martin Mhando, and Alistair Patterson.https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/1021/thumbnail.jp

Vulnerability and marine resource-dependence in coastal and marine social-ecological systems

Vulnerability research in coastal and marine social-ecological systems (CM-SES) to date has focused primarily on conceptual analyses of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Meanwhile the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) has been utilized mainly in natural resource management or poverty alleviation strategies. The present thesis combines these two frameworks in order to investigate the relationships between marine resource dependence and vulnerability within the CM-SES, using the SLA as a point of departure for analysis. Using a case study approach, questionnaires, key informant interviews, focus groups and participant observation were carried out in two regions, Zanzibar, Tanzania and the Spermonde Archipelago, Indonesia

We are one: the emergence and development of national consciousness in Tanzania

This thesis examines the emergence and development of national consciousness and identity in the East African nation Tanzania. A work in the science of humanity, it connects traditional social sciences through the approach of mentalism. To date, research on African nationalism centers on the nation-state and national party, and on the teleological assumption that nation building implies cultural unification within the boundaries of the state's territory. National sovereignty is seen as a natural desire; nationalism in Africa is conflated with anti-colonialism and treated as the inevitable transition from the colonial to post-colonial order. Yet this approach to the study of African nationalism cannot account for many important processes, such as why many African states have failed, why corruption is rampant, and why authoritarian regimes predominate. I argue many aspects of modern African history are impossible to understand without recognizing that nationalism ushers in modernity and transforms and affects the major cultural institutions. I show how the process of national identity formation within Tanzania was the same process that occurs elsewhere. Nationalism did not exist in Tanzania among the native inhabitants prior to independence. Moreover, the creation of a shared sense of national identity began only after independence: the independent state was not a nation. In examining the national image created by several integral Tanzanian intellectuals, I reflect both on the significance they placed on their narratives and how it shaped the wider social world and the identities of those they influenced. My argument regarding Tanzania may apply to Africa more generally. The processes I described appear true of social and political developments across the continent. Many in Africa do now see themselves as equal members of sovereign societies and believe that the people are the ultimate source of political legitimacy. This work provides a methodology and argument that can be applied to address additional questions of how specifically nationalism has transformed African societies

Human computer interaction for international development: past present and future

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in research into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of developing regions, particularly into how such ICTs might be appropriately designed to meet the unique user and infrastructural requirements that we encounter in these cross-cultural environments. This emerging field, known to some as HCI4D, is the product of a diverse set of origins. As such, it can often be difficult to navigate prior work, and/or to piece together a broad picture of what the field looks like as a whole. In this paper, we aim to contextualize HCI4D—to give it some historical background, to review its existing literature spanning a number of research traditions, to discuss some of its key issues arising from the work done so far, and to suggest some major research objectives for the future

A Language for the World: The Standardization of Swahili

This intellectual history of Standard Swahili explores the long-term, intertwined processes of standard making and community creation in the historical, political, and cultural contexts of East Africa and beyond. Morgan J. Robinson argues that the portability of Standard Swahili has contributed to its wide use not only across the African continent but also around the globe. The book pivots on the question of whether standardized versions of African languages have empowered or oppressed. It is inevitable that the selection and promotion of one version of a language as standard—a move typically associated with missionaries and colonial regimes—negatively affected those whose language was suddenly deemed nonstandard. Before reconciling the consequences of codification, however, Robinson argues that one must seek to understand the process itself. The history of Standard Swahili demonstrates how events, people, and ideas move rapidly and sometimes surprisingly between linguistic, political, social, or temporal categories. Robinson conducted her research in Zanzibar, mainland Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. Organized around periods of conversation, translation, and codification from 1864 to 1964, the book focuses on the intellectual history of Swahili’s standardization. The story begins in mid-nineteenth-century Zanzibar, home of missionaries, formerly enslaved students, and a printing press, and concludes on the mainland in the mid-twentieth century, as nationalist movements added Standard Swahili to their anticolonial and nation-building toolkits. This outcome was not predetermined, however, and Robinson offers a new context for the strong emotions that the language continues to evoke in East Africa. The history of Standard Swahili is not one story, but rather the connected stories of multiple communities contributing to the production of knowledge. The book reflects this multiplicity by including the narratives of colonial officials and anticolonial nationalists; East African clerks, students, newspaper editors, editorialists, and their readers; and library patrons, academic linguists, formerly enslaved children, and missionary preachers. The book reconstructs these stories on their own terms and reintegrates them into a new composite that demonstrates the central place of language in the history of East Africa and beyond.https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/1018/thumbnail.jp

Identity, tradition and fashion-able challenges

Tese de Doutoramento em Design, com a especialização em Design apresentada na Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Doutora.Situada no cruzamento disciplinar do design, sustentabilidade, história, antropologia, estudos de cultura material, da moda e do vestir, esta tese confirma que a capulana é mais que um mero pano rectangular estampado industrialmente. É a indumentária nacional através da qual as Moçambicanas preservam e, ao mesmo tempo, atualizam as suas tradições e o seu sentido de pertença, a sua Moçambicanidade. O presente estudo parte duma pesquisa teórica aplicada sobre este pano, e é dividido em três fases cronológicas distintas. O passado, revelando a história da capulana para compreender a sua evolução no contexto das rotas comerciais do Índico. O presente, coolhunting, incluindo trabalho de campo e pesquisa de mercado em Maputo, situa a análise sobre a produção e o consumo da capulana. E o futuro, onde a capulana fashion-able é retratada na sua expressividade cultural e como instrumento passível de práticas de Design para a Sustentabilidade (D4S); esta última parte foi essencialmente realizada na grande Lisboa. Esta análise conclui que em Maputo, o status quo do pano tradicional é reiterado diariamente pela combinação de novas formas de vestir e pensar a capulana num diálogo constante com a roupa “estrangeira”, produzindo estilos e modas outros. Uma prática de vestir que aqui se defende como fashion-ability ou a habilidade de fazer moda. Sempre permeável, versátil e adaptável, a capulana é objeto do que se intitula nesta tese uma “tradição dinâmica”. Uma tradição sólida, porém, não estática. Ao longo dos tempos a capulana tem-se ajustado às influências quotidianas e ocasionais, dinâmica e permanentemente. Até à data, seja no seu contexto original seja no da diáspora, o pano é utilizado tanto na sua forma cortada como por inteiro. Contudo, hoje em dia, a “amarração” do pano é vista pelas novas gerações como antiquada, enquanto a sua forma cortada oferece maior e melhor resposta às exigências de se “ser moderno”. Esta pesquisa D4S, contemplou vários problemas socioculturais observados tanto em Maputo como em Lisboa. Sejam: as frágeis cadeias de design e produção; o papel dos alfaiates, as suas condições de educação (informal) e empregabilidade; como a tendência das jovens designers de moda para uma capulana cortada que abandona a tradicional forma de vestir o pano drapeado, enrolado e amarrado em torno do corpo. Neste contexto, o presente estudo tem como principal objetivo encontrar metodologias D4S para capturar - tanto funcional quanto simbolicamente - a dinâmica da tradição da capulana e desenvolver ações que, a partir do conceito fashion-able e através do (re) uso criativo da capulana, fortaleçam a identidade e sustentabilidade cultural da Diáspora em Lisboa. Ao identificarem-se os alfaiates Africanos e as jovens designers de moda Africanas como principais mediadores que transformam, traduzem, distorcem e modificam a significância do pano, pergunta-se: (1) como pode a moda quotidiana baseada na tradição de capulana contribuir para reforçar processos de identidade e a sustentabilidade cultural na diáspora? (2) como pode ser reforçado o papel do alfaiate Africano tanto em Maputo, como em Lisboa? (3) como pode o ofício de alfaiate ser reapropriado por um sistema de educação formal que atualiza os conhecimentos e habilidades dos alfaiates Africanos em Lisboa? E, finalmente (4) como pode o modo tradicional de vestir a capulana – como um rectângulo de tecido – ser atualizado de forma a reintroduzi-lo no sartório contemporâneo Africano? Com base numa metodologia teórico-prática combina-se uma análise histórica com uma pesquisa-ação-participativa para melhor contextualizar e mapear diferentes práticas atuais de vestir capulana e para desenvolver, posteriormente, em Lisboa dois laboratórios criativos: EPAT e Capulanar. Aqui, reconhecem-se os conceitos Co-design, Slow-fashion e Afetividade como conceitos culturais da capulana, para assim confirmar que as novas expressões criativas situadas em torno da fashion-ability do tecido tradicional podem ser a chave para a sustentabilidade do próprio pano. Contribuindo para um espaço de reflexão sobre as metodologias D4S, identidade, tradição e práticas fashion-able, esta tese conclui que o Conhecimento Cultural é uma das dimensões que consolidam estes quatro conceitos. Em paralelo permite repensar a ability do pano cujos resultados espelham a identidade africana e contribuem para uma mais eficaz sustentabilidade cultural das próprias comunidades envolvidas. Este trabalho procurou, em suma, alcançar o impacto positivo onde a moda, o design, a criatividade, a inovação e a sustentabilidade podem coexistir.ABSTRACT: The present study focuses on the role Design for Sustainability (D4S) methodologies play in defining fashion-able practices based on capulana’s “moving tradition” to reinforce identity processes and cultural sustainability in Lisbon’s diaspora context. Situated at the disciplinary intersections of design, sustainability, anthropology, material cultural studies, history, fashion and dress studies, this D4S approach takes on two creative and pedagogical practical applications, which simultaneously uses creative collaboration as a methodological strategy and Cultural knowledge as a tool to Co-design products that embody Affectivity and, for that matter, are driven towards Slow-fashion. Both theoretical and practical, this approach combines historical analysis with participatory action research to further contextualize and map out the complexities of capulana’s dress practices performed by African tailors and emergent African women fashion designers in Maputo and Lisbon. With the underlying questions: (1) How can tailoring be re-appropriated by a ‘formal’ education system upgrading the knowledge and skills of African tailors in Lisbon? (2) How can the traditional way of wearing capulana – as a rectangle of fabric – be updated in order to reintroduce it in contemporary African sartorial? Contributing to a space for inquiry on identity, tradition and fashion-ability, this thesis finally concludes that if we use Cultural Knowledge from the main agents in capulana’s innovation, we may be able to re-think the potential sustainability behind these practices and also propose results that can mirror the affirmation of African identity. Capulana‘s Slow-fashion, Co-design and Affectivity, as core cultural concepts, are therefore essential guidelines to develop sustainable solutions around both the re-usage of the cloth – in its, more or less, traditional (un)cut forms – and the fragile chains of design, production and consumption, especially by younger generations of consumers. Hence, this work looks forward to achieve the kind of positive impact where fashion, design, creativity, innovation and sustainability can co-exist.N/