Academic literature on the topic 'Hutu (African People) – Ethnic identity'

The Kalanga occupy the south-western parts of Zimbabwe, their larger concentration is in modern-day Bulilimamangwe district although some clusters of Kalanga people are distributed throughout Kezi, Gwanda and Tsholotsho districts, among other areas, west of Zimbabwe. The chapter acknowledges that Kalanga identities in pre-colonial Zimbabwean society were multiple, however, it mainly focusses on Kalanga religion (the Mwali/Ngwali Cult) and Kalanga language and demonstrates how these pre-colonial Kalanga forms of identities were later politicised and (re) interpreted and manipulated by colonialists, missionaries and Africans in an endeavour to construct Kalanga ethnic identity. The main purpose of the chapter is to present and reflect on selected Kalanga precolonial forms of identities and show how these were used to (re) construct the Kalanga ethnic identity in colonial Zimbabwe. The chapter further argues that identities are not fixed primordial phenomenon but are constructed and reconstructed over the longee durree using precolonial forms of identities such as language and religion.

This chapter demonstrates how the media representation of immigration in France is at odds with the recent production of literary works by French authors of Maghrebi origins. Referring to novels by Faïza Guène (Les gens du Balto), Saphia Azzeddine (La Mecque-Phuket), and Nadia Bouzid (Quand Beretta est morte), it shows how the concerns of the “first” and “second” generation of immigrants are a thing of the past, as these writers choose to deconstruct the usual discourse about Maghrebi-French people, inscribe their narrative in different literary traditions, and assert their place in Literature.

The Lott House in Brooklyn, one of the few remaining Dutch colonial farmhouses in New York City, was a place of multiple and transforming identities in encounters between persons of Dutch, English, and African descent. At one time the family was among the largest slaveholders in Brooklyn, yet they may have become abolitionists and used their house as part of the Underground Railroad. This chapter looks at the Lott family in the first half of the nineteenth century and how they fashioned and adapted their identities within the changing environment of antebellum America, particularly in relation to the people of African descent whom they owned, employed, or otherwise encountered. Making use of the built environment and archival evidence, the author argues that identity formation for the Lotts was a troubled endeavor, made difficult by the contradictory and sometimes clashing facets of their ethnic, religious, and social identities.

This chapter discusses how participation in hip hop culture could lead to recognition from non-Muslim peers. “Hip hopper” was for the Legendz a widely recognized and desirable identity that could momentarily precede and eclipse that of “religious Muslim” in an interaction with non-Muslim peers. In making meaningful social connections with other urban youth based on a shared engagement with hip hop culture, the Legendz were following a pattern observed by sociologists among other second-generation immigrants whose participation in hip hop music and style allowed them to gain acceptance and make social inroads among young people from outside their immediate ethnic community. In addition to employing hip hop as a way to gain acceptance and make connections with a broader urban American community of non-Muslims, the Legendz also actively adapted the genre's music and culture in creative ways to develop their own in-group Muslim American identity and style. The resulting identity performance—referred to as cool piety—tapped into broader African American urban cool while still exhibiting a close association with local standards of Islamic behavior to produce a nuanced and multifaceted presentation of Muslim American self.

This chapter presents theoretical and historical sketches of Guyana and Trinidad. Both countries share a similar colonial history and ethnic makeup, with people of Indian descent representing 39.3 percent of the total population in Guyana and 35 percent in Trinidad. The focus on Trinidad and Guyana, then, stems from the social and political significance of the Indian communities in these countries. The problematic coexistence of the dominant African creole culture and Indian culture in the Caribbean is central to explaining the location of Indo-Caribbean populations within their particular socioeconomic, political, and gendered spaces. In addressing the notion of “Indian identity,” both Indo-Trinidadians and Indo-Guyanese ask whether their respective identities reflect the “purity” of their Indian ancestry. In both spaces, the Indian community must determine the extent to which they want to associate their “Indianness” with India, or with the nation-state in which they were born.

The stone towns of the Swahili coast define and embody both contemporary Swahili society and the ways that the archaeology of that region is known. The series of large-scale projects that have explored their architecture and changing material culture provide the means through which the past is conceived, even though these stone towns were themselves a particular material expression of a broader eastern African society, linked through networks of trade and interaction from earliest times. Urban centres provided the setting for the practices and lifestyles that came to be construed as Swahili, and twenty-first-century stone towns such as Lamu, Mombasa, and Zanzibar are still the quintessential expression of coastal culture. Stone-town excavations therefore structure our understandings of ancient Swahili materiality, and explorations of the wider society use these urban trajectories and developmental sequences as their reference point for exploration of the broader context. The objects of the Swahili world, reviewed in this chapter, are therefore presented through the archaeology of some of the more prominent stone-town excavations that together have defined our understandings. Rather than offering a comprehensive review of the archaeology of the coast (for which see Horton and Middleton 2000; Kusimba 1999b), this chapter discusses the material settings of the town. After a brief consideration of these key excavations, discussion focuses on themes in the study of Swahili materiality, and the ways that this has been conceptualized. Objects are implicated in understandings of identity from two angles, first as a reflection of some kind of ethnic identity, and second as part of the practices of daily life and the ways that people have constructed the urban social world. These discussions introduce more sites into consideration, and attempt to position them with relation to material understandings. The Swahili world presents itself as a ‘material culture’, in which objects are and were crucial to the performance of social roles and the construction of the urban environment. The evidence suggests that the Swahili themselves have long manipulated the material world to create a certain form of urban life, which defines and also creates certain types of person and activity.