The politics of identity on Zanzibar

This dissertation addresses issues of identity on Zanzibar and the East African coast. It combines historiographical essays on Swahili Studies, African Studies, and Anthropology with an analysis of fieldwork conducted in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 1991 and 1992. This analysis suggests that identity on the East African coast constitutes a performative practice, located within specific historical contexts.;The dissertation focuses on the opposition between "African" and "Arab", documenting how racial difference is constructed and remains fundamentally linked with constructions of gender, religion, status, and sexuality. Thus different configurations of identity are highlighted during the Arab and British colonial eras, the post-independence revolutionary period, and in the early 1990s on Zanzibar. Particular attention is paid to state policies that affect local categories of identity, and to contemporary performances by culture groups during local Islamic holidays. Finally, this dissertation demonstrates how knowledge is produced from particular locations and perspectives, highlighting the author's own participation in and effect upon the ethnographic record.