Labnet: CFP: The Indian Ocean: the largest cultural continuum in the world' - Sansibar 08/08

[labnet at lists.labourhistory.net]

[Cross-posted, with thanks, from H-Soz-u-Kult. AB]

From:    Martin Garstecki <garstecki at wiko-berlin.de>
Date:    25.01.2008
Subject: CFP: The Indian Ocean: the largest cultural continuum in the
world - Sansibar 08/08
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Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institute (ZIORI), Sansibar
29.08.2008-31.08.2008, Sansibar
Deadline: 28.02.2008

Call for Papers

ZIORI is planning to organise its inaugural conference on "The Indian
Ocean: The largest cultural continuum in the world" in Zanzibar.

ZIORI is an independent research institute dedicated to the promotion of
research on all aspects of the Indian Ocean in the social sciences,
especially by scholars from within the region; and to help develop the
research capacity of its aspiring young scholars. 

We would like to organise the conference around the three themes that we
have identified for ourselves during the initial phase, viz.

1.  Maritime cultures & globalisation in the Indian Ocean;
2.  Migrations & formation of new societies in the Indian Ocean: free
movement of traders, sailors and migrants, slave trade, and indentured
labour;
3.  Swahili civilisation and politics of city-states and
marginalisation. 

Attach please find an elaboration of these themes which should act only
as guidelines to our objectives, without necessarily binding us to the
parameters defined therein.

The inaugural conference is intended not to launch our Research
Programme by individual scholars, which we hope to do from 2009 onwards,
but to delineate our methodology, approach & appropriate paradigms, and
subject them to intensive brainstorming during the three days of the
conference. To lead the debates, we propose to commission a series of
'state of the art' papers on these three major areas, and their
sub-divisions where necessary. We can identify the following themes and
sub-themes that deserve such papers, and there may be other suggestions
that we would welcome. 

1.  Maritime cultures & globalisation in the Indian Ocean
2.  Indonesian migrations to Madagascar & Africa
3.  Hadhrami migrations across the Indian Ocean, & relations with the
homeland
4.  Slave trade & slavery in the Indian Ocean
5.  Indentured labour in the Indian Ocean, & the creation of new
societies
6.  Swahili civilisation & politics of city-states and marginalization.

In each paper, we suggest to include, inter alia:

i.   A concise and incisive literature survey;
ii.   A critique of the methodology, approach, and paradigms, and
suggestions for innovative methodology appropriate to the history and
culture of the region;
iii.   A comprehensive bibliography that will be useful to researchers
when we embark on the Research Programme, especially to younger
scholars.

Apart from these papers, we would welcome other papers on detailed
research focussed on any one of these themes and sub-themes by scholars
who would like to attend on their own, and contribute to the discussion
using their own expertise. I shall appreciate specific names of possible
contributors whom we can invite if they can find their own funding.  

We would welcome expression of interest in presenting either one of the
"state of the art" papers, or a paper relevant to the three themes of
ZIORI, by 28th February, 2008, when the Board of Directors can sit to
make selections. 

There is only a small allocation of funds to cover fares and
accommodation of only a very small number of people who can undertake to
do the "state of the art" papers, and who cannot be supported by their
institutions, especially from the Indian Ocean region. Those who would
like to apply for such support should indicate their interest at an
early date.  

We hope that these papers, thoroughly revised on the basis of the
discussion at the conference, will stand together as a guide to the
Research Programme. It will help us justify our effort to raise the
necessary research funds to support individual researchers and their
graduate assistants. The bibliographies, if they cannot be published
with the proceedings of the conference, can be made available on the
ZIORI website, and updated periodically. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institute (ZIORI)

Major Areas of Research

The Institute has identified three inter-related areas of social
research:

I. Maritime Cultures & Globalisation in the Indian Ocean

Braudel introduced an important concept of the longue duree to
understand the truly great movements (and not moments) of history,
focused on the dialectical relationship between human beings and their
environment. For more than fifteen centuries before the coming of the
Europeans, processes of economic and socio-cultural interaction in the
Indian Ocean were not hampered by monopolistic continental or seaborne
empires, and even after their intervention, some of these processes
continued to operate under their radar screen, with long-term
consequences. The inhabitants could thus share in the  biodiversity of
the world to obtain new plants and animals, exchange complementary
commodities, and create larger social and cultural unities centred on
the ocean.

The sea has played a vibrant role in the life and psyche of coastal
peoples around the rim of the Indian Ocean, and has given rise to a
maritime ethos and disposition, a distinctive maritime culture which
differs fundamentally from a continental one. For more than 2000 years
the wooden sailing vessel, the dhow, has been the principal vehicle
linking many regions around the western Indian Ocean, not only
commercially, but also socially and culturally. As it has been said, of
all things, the ship is the most cosmopolitan.   

While commerce was generally the primary motive, its influence extended
to the social and cultural arenas. Commerce necessarily demands exchange
of goods among peoples of different ecologies, regardless of racial,
religious or cultural differences, and calls for continuous expansion of
inter-community relations between the 'native' and the "foreigner". They
exchanged not only goods but also ideas, and they engaged in intimate
social relations that were not confined to the market place, but often
extended to the bed. From the earliest times there is evidence of
intense interaction and intermarriage, and some settled down, gradually
becoming indigenised. 

Mercantile communities are therefore necessarily open societies,
cosmopolitan, and thriving on diversity. While this does not lead
automatically to a harmonious blend - particularly during the sad
chapter of slavery and the slave trade, which became a base for social
disharmony - it was nevertheless remarkably tolerant towards other
religions and cultures.
 
The "dhow culture" represents an earlier phase of global interaction,
but one that was of a fundamentally different type from the modern
globalisation. Indian Ocean was largely an arena of free trade. None of
the major states in the continental heartlands around the Indian Ocean
played an important role in maritime affairs. Maritime trade was instead
cultivated by a string of small port/city states that depended
predominantly on it for their livelihood and prosperity, and developed
distinctive mercantile cultures that often attained high levels of
development and civilisation. They were threaded together by
trans-oceanic exchange of goods, culture and ideas. Often they had more
in common with other ports across the ocean than with their individual
hinterlands. The heroes of Indian Ocean trade were places like Kilwa and
Mombasa on the East African coast, Aden and Hormuz at the mouths of the
Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, Calicut on the Malabar coast, and Malacca
at the Straits of Malacca. 

It was left to the Portuguese and their European successors to set up a
series of seaborne empires whose initial objective was to monopolise the
spice trade, and ended up imposing colonial empires. However, despite
colonial impositions and modern-day neo-liberal world hegemony, some of
the elements of the old Indian Ocean world - such as what has been
called the "bazaar nexus" and cultural intermingling across the Indian
Ocean, continue to persist. It is a very broad field of scholarly
investigation that has great relevance to the current debate on
globalisation, and the dialectics of differing conceptions of "clash" or
"dialogue of civilizations".

II. Migrations & Formation of New Societies in the Indian Ocean: free
movement, slave trade, & indentured labour. 
Movements and migrations of people across the Indian Ocean have been
part of the reality throughout history. Modern genetic research is
investigating migration of early human beings from their African cradle
to populate the whole world. The movement of people from the Indonesian
archipelago in the opposite direction to occupy Madagascar, and
intermingle there with those coming from the African continent within
the past millennium, is still a historical enigma.  

However, while occasionally there have been short spurts of more
concerted migration of larger numbers, quite often this has been an
unorganised gradual seepage by individuals as traders, sailors, scholars
and settlers, which has been going on for thousands of years. Indians in
Africa and Malaysia moved as traders in the pre-colonial period, and
were transported as "coolies" during the colonial period. Hadhramis,
escaping from the perennial droughts in their desert homeland, played a
critical role in trade and religion, with a wide network all over the
Indian Ocean from the Comoros to Indonesia for centuries. While they
often nostalgically looked back to their homelands as pure if poor, they
made their new homes in places like Java which they considered paradise
in comparison. These migrations have led to different consequences for
host societies as well as for the migrants. It is these social processes
of migration and assimilation in their specificity that are the most
interesting historical and social questions needing investigation
without imposing on them inappropriate paradigms. 

One of the concepts that has been widely used to refer to migrated
populations who crossed borders and exist under different circumstances
has been the diaspora, a term that is overloaded with connotations of
traumatic dispersal, collective memory of an idealised homeland, a
strong ethnic consciousness, troubled relations with the host community,
a return movement, etc. It is a carry-over from the Jewish experience,
and more recently from the Atlantic slave experience. However, in the
Indian Ocean, people of African origin may have moved to India and the
Persian Gulf as free people as well as slaves, and Asians were moved to
Africa and South East Asia as slaves or moved as traders or indentured
labourers. 

The concept of the diaspora is preoccupied with 'roots' rather than
'routes', and carries the danger of essentialising 'origins',
associating these communities with a place, a culture, a race and an
identity as frozen categories, and ignoring the social processes of
migration, adaptation and assimilation that are the historical
experiences in the Indian Ocean. In recent years it has become popular
to 'discover' people of African origin all over the Indian Ocean by
focusing on their phenotype and their 'African' music and dance, often
based on an assumption that most of them must have been taken as slaves,
which may do injustice to the rich variety of their histories and
experiences.  

Even when considering the sad chapter of slavery and slave trade in the
Indian Ocean, it is important not to impose the Atlantic paradigm.
Unlike the Atlantic system that evolved at the 'rosy dawn' of
capitalism, and carried certain specific features of that mode of
production, slavery and the slave trade extended over a much longer
period in the Indian Ocean, but it was intermittent. It therefore
developed under different circumstances, social systems, and modes of
production. While the slave trade from Africa to other countries around
the Indian Ocean is familiar, though not always concretely understood,
the huge internal slave trade within India or the Indonesian archipelago
has rarely received any attention, and the export of 'Malay' slaves to
Cape Town by the Dutch, or of Baluchi slaves to the Persian Gulf, are
still mere footnotes at best. The phenomenon was much more complex in
the Indian Ocean, and the social composition of the slaves, and the
processes of social interaction and assimilation provide an enlightening
contrast to the Atlantic paradigm. 

The two experiences in the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean come closer
together in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery during the
colonial period when slaves were replaced by indentured 'coolie' labour
from the more populous countries in Asia, especially India and China. In
many cases it has transformed the social and cultural landscape of such
regions as Natal, Kenya, Mauritius and Fiji, as much as Trinidad and
Guiana in the Caribbean. With the growing awareness and assertion of
identity, greater emphasis has been placed on the social and cultural
history of these communities, not focusing merely on their 'origins',
but on local interactions and assimilation, and creation of new
communities that are quintessentially maritime Indian Ocean.  

III. Swahili Civilisation & Politics of City-States & Marginalisation

A serious debate has been going on over the past three decades on the
nature of the East African coastal society: was it primarily an oriental
transplant or purely African? For a littoral society at the confluence
between Africa and the Indian Ocean, both protagonists have been
misguided by focusing on one and ignoring the other. As Professor
Abdalla Bujra has argued, both have erred by focusing on the racial
origins of a major culture and society rather than on the basic nature
and historical role of that society.  It is indeed a pristine example of
a composite society born of a social and cultural dialogue between a
continental and an oceanic environment.

Bujra has proposed a rethinking in a more holistic way, taking into
consideration the strategic position the Swahili occupy between the
African continent and the Indian Ocean. The land provided the habitat in
which the Swahili economy and society developed, including local
agricultural and industrial production as well as exchange with the
hinterland. It also provided the basic stock of population and the
prevalent Bantu language. But the sea also played an active role in the
life of the coastal people, producing not only sea-foods for
subsistence, but also articles for local and oceanic exchange. It has
given rise to a distinctive maritime culture. As Middleton says, the
Swahili use the sea as though it was a network of roads, and it is
divided into territories owned by families and protected by spirits just
like stretches of land. The sea enters their everyday life at every
step, and even into their proverbs, prose and poetry.  

One distinguishing characteristic of the Swahili is their religion,
Islam. The Swahili coast has been part of the Islamic world from at
least the eighth century. The process of exchange, social interaction
and cultural inter-penetration that began there had a ripple effect
across the vast Indian Ocean, bringing Islam from Arabia and the Persian
Gulf to the Swahili coast, and from there it spread deep into
continental Africa, carrying the Swahili language and culture as far
eastern Congo. However, as in the case of other aspects of culture, it
was not an adoption of a whole system of beliefs, but rather as a
syncretic assimilation of local belief systems in Islam. The result is a
fusion in life. Religious life rests on a double foundation, a Bantu
under-layer and an Islamic superstructure. African religious beliefs and
institutions continued alongside features of the new religion. Islam
permeates every aspect of the Swahili society despite the variation in
the Islamic/traditional beliefs mix between different sections of the
society.

The interaction between land and sea gave rise to a polyglot and
poly-ethnic society, and the culture that developed over several
millennia based on intercourse between Africa and the lands across the
Indian Ocean has been distinctly cosmopolitan, immersed in dense webs of
production and exchange, ethnicity, kinship, and residence, with
influences on material culture, social institutions, belief systems,
language and literature. Middleton views Swahili society as a middleman
society composed of commercial and cultural brokers who mediated between
the commercial world of the sea and the productive one of the
hinterland. A history of cross-cultural interaction, trade and
intermarriage with other littoral peoples all around the rim of the
Indian Ocean leads the Swahili peoples to situate their identity in the
context of wider global exchanges. Spear concludes: 'we now see Swahili
towns not as exclusive foreign transplants nor as solely local
development, but as dynamic cultural and commercial entrepots in an
Indian Ocean world stretching from East Africa to Malaysia.' 

The Swahili civilisation reached a high level of cultural development
and economic prosperity as shown by the ruins at Kilwa and elsewhere on
the Swahili coast. However, the politically acephalous Swahili
city-states were ill-prepared to face the Portuguese onslaught from the
sixteenth century when the Europeans began to impose trade monopolies
and political hegemony. Unable to overthrow the Portuguese yoke, the
Swahili had to turn to their maritime Omani neighbours for assistance,
but they in turn eventually set up a commercial empire that for the
first time politically united the Swahili coast from southern Somalia to
the southern end of the Tanzanian coast, though now under Omani rule. 

With expanding commercial opportunities in the 19th century and a common
religion, the Swahili were able to participate in that prosperity.
However, with the Partition of Africa and of the Zanzibari Commercial
Empire, and the simultaneous penetration of Christian missions into
Eastern Africa, the tables were turned against the coastal Muslims by
pockets of economic prosperity and modern religious and secular
education in the interior. The coast was bypassed by new colonial
production and education. It is a crisis of marginalisation that simmers
under the surface, and occasionally erupts as Muslim protests. 

The confluence between cultures along the Swahili coast had left a
potential cleavage between the continental and oceanic faces of the
Swahili culture. Coupled with a history of slavery and colonialism, the
society sometimes came apart at the seams. Economic hardships and
socio-political tensions came to a head in the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution
which sought to tear asunder centuries of miscegenation and cultural
assimilation, asserting African identity while trying to erase the other
side of the Swahili coin. Links with the hinterland have been
strengthened, in the case of Zanzibar with the formation of the
Tanzanian Union, and in East Africa as a whole by the political and
economic domination by the interior over the coastal belt, now under the
overall hegemony of the neo-liberal globalisation agenda. However, it
still has to be seen whether millennia of cultural interaction between
the littoral people of the Swahili corridor from Mogadishu to Sofala,
and their counterparts in the hinterland on the one hand and around the
rim of the Indian Ocean on the other, and the distinctive civilization
and language that have been engendered, will still stand the test of
time, as it has done for centuries past. The Swahili language continues
to make giant strides as a lingua franca, and now as national languages,
over a large part of eastern Africa. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Abdul Sheriff


PO Box 4204, Zanzibar, Tansania
+255 - 777 - 415 335
info at ziori.org

Website des Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institutes
<http://www.ziori.org>

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