Continuity and Autonomy in Swahili Communities: Inland Influences and Strategies of Self-Determination. (book reviews)

This is the fourth volume arising out of an ongoing series of inter-disciplinary Franco-British Swahili Workshops, all of which focus on the east coast of Africa. Inevitably the collected fifteen papers are extremely varied in their approach and content, but all are concerned with issues of shifting boundaries and identities.

David Parkin provides a useful introduction, noting that 'what constitutes the Swahili cultural and linguistic complex is always in a state of development and of flux' (p. 3). The resultant identities cannot be based on tidy and clearly-correlated racial, ethnic, ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.