Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:21:38.654Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Swahili Mijikenda: facing both ways in Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

David Parkin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I describe a people who, in aspiring to Swahili Islamic values and life style, marginalise themselves economically and politically.

The title of the article both indicates the dilemma of their identity and, for scholars who study Swahili-speaking peoples, is deliberately provocative. How can people whom we call or who call themselves Swahili possibly also be referred to as Mijikenda? After all, these two peoples have in other descriptions been shown to be sharply distinct, either as enemies, as traders in separate goods, or as employers and labourers respectively. Yet, though this is a reasonable characterisation of a difference of great historical significance for the creation of Kenyan coast culture and hegemony, it forgets the areas of overlap between the two peoples, where, in effect, it becomes sometimes impossible to posit consistent differences. The sharp delineation conventionally recorded by writers between the Swahili and the Mijikenda (and the various names by which they have been known before the use of this term in 1945) is as much a result of the conditions under which such writings were produced: they unconsciously reproduce the very distinctions by which pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial authorities administered and ruled the area and its peoples.

Résumé

Swahili Mijikenda: face à deux directions au Kenya

Cet article analyse un peuple qui aspire aux valeurs islamiques swahili mais également qui se marginalise économiquement et politiquement. Ces peuples sont dispersés le long du littoral du Kenya méridional et de la Tanzanie septentrionale et sont des pêcheurs par tradition. Leur première langue est le swahili et ils se réfèrent à eux-mêmes comme peuple swahili, mais ils reconnaissent que leurs origines ancestrales remontent aux peuples non musulmans de l'arrière-pays du littoral. Les gens décrits ici s'appellent Digo, mais vivent séparés du groupe principal Digo, résidant dans le région Kwale, depuis plusiers générations.

Ces aspirants swahili se placent eux-mêmes et placent leur comportement et leur langue au-dessus de leurs cousins non musulmans tout en se considérant inférieurs au statut élevé des Swahilis et des Arabes. Cette position externe dans la classification des groupes ethniques est un analogue de comportement au sein de leur propre groupe: on considère que certains types de comportement remontent à leurs origines non musulmanes, tandis que les autres sont applaudis comme un émulation des styles de vie swahili-arabes.

Ce désir culturel vers un statut élevé swahili entraîne des dépenses fabuleuses en mariages et exclut en fait les femmes des travaux agricoles car il ne faut pas qu'on les surprenne en train d'effectuer des tâches subalternes. En mème temps, l'industrie traditionnelle de la pêche a subi un déclin qui a incité de nombreuses families à vouloir vendre les terres du littoral de grande valeur. Les acquéreurs de ces terres ont tendance à être des gens d'affaires non musulmans du haut du pays. Les aspirants swahili perdent ainsi leur capital principal tout en atteignant rarement les niveaux sociaux élevés qu'ils recherchent. Si Ton suit la pensée d'écrivains tels que Legendre (1976), on peut constater qu'il s'agit d'un cas où le désir crée un manque qui ne fait qu'attiser davantage ce désir, ce qui constitue une motivation politique qui ne peut être satisfaite.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 59 , Issue 2: Social Stratification in Swahili Society , April 1989 , pp. 161 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdulaziz, M. H. 1979. Muyaka: 19th-century Swahili popular poetry. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau.Google Scholar
Akong’a, J. J. 1980. Social Training Strategies: the Swahili of Old Mombasa, Paper no. 132, Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi.Google Scholar
Allen, J. de Vere. 1979. Swahiliisation: a cultural concept and its significance in Kenya today, Paper no. 125, Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi.Google Scholar
Arens, W. 1975. ‘The Waswahili: the social history of an ethnic group’, Africa, 45: 426–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caplan, A. P. 1982. ‘Gender, ideology and modes of production on the coast of East Africa’, Paideuma, 28 (Frankfurt).Google Scholar
Constantin, F. 1986. ‘Sur les modes populaires d'action diplomatique: affaires de famille et affaires d'état en afrique orientale’, Revue française de science politique, 36 (5): 672–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Constantin, F. 1987. ‘Le saint et le prince. Sur les fondements de la dynamique confrérique en Afrique orientale’, in Constantin, F. (ed.), Les voies de l'Islam en afrique orientale. Paris: Karthala for CREPAO.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, F. 1977. Plantation Slavers on the East Coast of Africa. New Haven: Yale.Google Scholar
Eastman, C. 1971. “Who are the Waswahili?’ Africa, 41, 228–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerlach, L. P. 1961. ‘The Social Organization of the Digo of Kenya’, PhD thesis, University of London.Google Scholar
Gomm, R. 1972. ‘Harlots and bachelors: marital instability among the coastal Digo of Kenya’, Man, 7:95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gomm, R. 1975. ‘Bargaining from weakness: spirit possession on the south Kenya coast’, Man, 10: 530–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legendre, P. 1976. Jouir du pouvoir. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Le Guennec-Coppens, Franchise. 1983. Femmes voilées de Lamu. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations.Google Scholar
Le Guennec-Coppens, Franchise. 1987. ‘L'instabilité conjugate et ses conséquences dans la société swahili de Lamu (Kenya)’, in Parkin, D. and Nyamwaya, D. (eds.), Transformations of African Marriage, pp. 233–46. Manchester: Manchester University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Parkin, D. 1979a. ‘Along the line of road: expanding centres in Kenya's coast province’, Africa, 49 (3): 272–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parkin, D. 1979b. ‘The categorisation of work’, in Wallman, Sandra (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Work, ASA Monograph no. 19, pp. 317–36. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Parkin, D. 1985a. ‘Being and selfhood among intermediary Swahili’, in Maw, J. and Parkin, D. (eds.), Swahili Language and Society. Vienna: Institute für Afrikanistik und Agyptologie der Universität Wien.Google Scholar
Parkin, D. 1985b. ‘L'Islam chez les Mijikenda: parenté sans lignages et lignages sans ancêtres’, paper presented to the seminar on Kinship and Exchange Networks between Southern Arabia and Eastern Africa, CNRS Maison des Etudes Méditerranées, Aix-en-Provence.Google Scholar
Salim, A. I. 1973. The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Kenya's Coast. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.Google Scholar
Spear, T. T. 1979. The Kaya Complex: a history of the Mijikenda people of the Kenya coast to 1900. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau.Google Scholar
Sperling, D. 1985. ‘Islamization in the coastal region of Kenya to the end of the nineteenth century’, in Ogot, Bethwell A. (ed.), Kenya in the 19th Century. Nairobi: Bookwise Ltd, Anyange Press.Google Scholar
Swartz, M. J. 1978. ‘Religious courts, community and ethnicity among the Swahili of Mombasa: an historical study of social boundaries’, Africa, 49 (1): 29–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar