Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author McIntosh, Janet, 1969- author.

Title The edge of Islam : power, personhood, and ethnoreligious boundaries on the Kenya Coast / Janet McIntosh
Published Durham : Duke University Press, 2009

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xi, 325 pages)
Series e-Duke books scholarly collection.
Contents The edge of Islam -- Origin stories: the rise of ethnic boundaries on the coast -- Blood money in motion: profit, personhood, and the Jini narratives -- Toxic bodies and intentional minds: hegemony and ideology in Giriama conversion experiences -- Rethinking syncretism: religious pluralism and code choice in a context of ethnoreligious tension -- Divination and madness: the powers and dangers of Arabic
Summary Explores ethnoreligious tensions in coastal Kenya between the impoverished Giriama people and their neighbors, the privileged Swahili and Arab communities, and documents the Giriama's idiosyncratic uses of Islam and their conflicted relationship with it
"In this theoretically rich exploration of ethnic and religious tensions, Janet McIntosh demonstrates how the relationship between two ethnic groups in the bustling Kenyan town of Malindi is reflected in and shaped by the different ways the two groups relate to Islam. While Swahili and Giriama peoples are historically interdependent, today Giriama find themselves literally and metaphorically on the margins, peering in at a Swahili life of greater social and economic privilege. Giriama are frustrated to find their ethnic identity disparaged and their versions of Islam sometimes rejected by Swahili. The Edge of Islam explores themes as wide-ranging as spirit possession, divination, healing rituals, madness, symbolic pollution, ideologies of money, linguistic code-switching, and syncretism and its alternatives. McIntosh shows how the differing versions of Islam practiced by Swahili and Giriama, and their differing understandings of personhood, have figured in the growing divisions between the two groups. Her ethnographic analysis helps to explain why Giriama view Islam, a supposedly universal religion, as belonging more deeply to certain ethnic groups than to others; why Giriama use Islam in their rituals despite the fact that so many do not consider the religion their own; and how Giriama appropriations of Islam subtly reinforce a distance between the religion and themselves. The Edge of Islam advances understanding of ethnic essentialism, religious plurality, spirit possession, local conceptions of personhood, and the many meanings of "Islam" across cultures."--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-311) and index
Notes English
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
Online resource; title from e-book title screen (EBL platform, viewed December 14, 2016)
digitized 2020. HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject Ethnic conflict -- Kenya -- Malindi -- Religious aspects
Swahili-speaking peoples -- Kenya -- Malindi -- Social life and customs
Giryama (African people) -- Kenya -- Malindi -- Religion
Giryama (African people) -- Kenya -- Malindi -- Social life and customs
Muslims -- Kenya -- Malindi
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Discrimination & Race Relations.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Ethnic Studies -- General.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Minority Studies.
Ethnic conflict -- Religious aspects
Ethnic relations
Giryama (African people) -- Religion
Giryama (African people) -- Social life and customs
Manners and customs
Swahili-speaking peoples -- Social life and customs
Muslims
Christentum
Gesellschaftsleben
Giryama
Interreligiƶser Dialog
Islam
Minderheitenfrage
Religiƶses Leben
Spiritismus
Swahili Volk
Synkretismus
Malindi (Kenya) -- Ethnic relations
Malindi (Kenya) -- Social life and customs
Kenya -- Malindi
Kenia -- Ost
Malindi
Giryama.
Swahili <Volk>
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780822390961
0822390965
1283064960
9781283064965
9786613064967
6613064963