Edible identities: Food, cultural mixing and the making of identities on the Swahili Coast

French sociologist Claude Fischler has said that food is central to our sense of identity as individuals, as family members and as members of larger groups. This dissertation examines the relationship between food and identity in the context of the culture and history of the people who have inhabited the Swahili Coast of East Africa for millennia. For more than one hundred years scholarly and political debates about the nature of Swahili identity have centered on whether they were Arab implants on the East African coast or indigenous to the region. Through the lens of food and food habits (cultural practices related to food), this dissertation argues for a more complex and nuanced understanding of that identity, one that recognizes both differences and commonalities in specific historical contexts over time.;Following the lead of scholars who study the history of mixed cultures in Latin America and other regions of Africa, I draw from a variety of sources (travel accounts, archival materials, cookbooks from the East African mainland, coast and islands, and interviews with Zanzibari women) and many disciplines (history, anthropology, sociology, post-colonial and cultural studies) to explore multiple methodologies suggested by the sources themselves for examining some of the many ways in which food and food habits facilitated mixing and reflected people's sense of who they were and are.