Description
Table of Contents1 Culture and identity among the Sukuma Culture Identity Cultural identity Relational theory of cultural identity Reconstructing cultural identity Created memory as a tool for the reconstruction of cultural identity A social system based on negotiation The current past, a helpful phenomenon Resistance to globalization 2 Origin and growth of Sukuma identity The historical identity of the Sukuma and the present The difficulty to discover a cultural paradigm The pre-colonial fluidity of Sukuma political structures Sukuma society. An overview of change and reputed tradition The neighbourhood and the family Sukuma religious beliefs and practices Witchcraft in Usukuma The Sukuma and the cattle mentality 3 The intrusions of colonialism The misunderstanding of the Sukuma political structure Indirect rule and the Sukuma The British presence in Usukuma The consequences of fixed administrative boundaries The foundations for a centralized legal system The shadow of colonialism and the loss of ritual power No feel for the people. A political and administrative fact Colonial administration and the range of alternatives Attempts to stabilize custom in the colonial period Bureaucracy, development and the Sukuma Christian missionaries and the recreation of culture Sukuma, British administrators and nationalist politics 4 The hopes and frustrations of socialist ideology The effect of independence and its idealism The establishment and growth of political nuclei The irritations of civil servant activism in Usukuma Politicians, administrators and unilineal development The exclusion of Sukuma peasants from prestige ‘Ujamaa’ and the making of villages in Usukuma The culture shock of villagization Women's emerging resistance to male domination The mass killing of witches and wizards in Usukuma The extension of a unified legal system to the control of custom The reassertion of customary law 5 The Sukuma and the ideology of a free market The privatization of the cotton industry and mineral mining 'Sungusungu' and the coming of a new era Democracy and the creation of public opinion AIDS and traditional ways of problem-solving A free market and the growth of uncontrolled animosities The growing intrusion of time and money into Sukuma life The Sukuma 'do-it-yourself religion and modernity Modernization and the retention of identity 6 Sukuma identity and modernization The illusion of theoretical model making The Sukuma paradigm. Some speculative thoughts Is there a Sukuma identity, or who is a Sukuma? The recreation of tradition as an ongoing social necessity Rejection of the fatal impact theory Sukuma and urban-industrial societies similarities References About the Authors
