This original collection brings islands to the fore in a growing body of scholarship on the Indian Ocean, examining them as hubs or points of convergence and divergence in a world of maritime movements and exchanges. Straddling history and anthropology and grounded in the framework of connectivity, the book tackles central themes such as smallness, translocality, and "the island factor." It moves to the farthest reaches of the region, with a rich variety of case studies on the Swahili-Comorian world, the Maldives, Indonesia, and more. With remarkable breadth and cohesion, these essays capture the circulations of people, goods, rituals, sociocultural practices, and ideas that constitute the Indian Ocean world. Together, they take up "islandness" as an explicit empirical and methodological issue as few have done before.
This original collection brings islands to the fore in a growing body of scholarship on the Indian Ocean, examining them as hubs or points of convergence and divergence in a world of maritime movements and exchanges. Straddling history and anthropology and grounded in the framework of connectivity, the book tackles central themes such as smallness, translocality, and "the island factor." It moves to the farthest reaches of the region, with a rich variety of case studies on the Swahili-Comorian world, the Maldives, Indonesia, and more. With remarkable breadth and cohesion, these essays capture the circulations of people, goods, rituals, sociocultural practices, and ideas that constitute the Indian Ocean world. Together, they take up "islandness" as an explicit empirical and methodological issue as few have done before.
I. Themes.- 1. "Connectivity in Motion": Island Hubs in the Indian Ocean World.- 2. Islands Connect: People, Things and Ideas among the Small Islands of the Western Indian Ocean.- 3. Small Island Hubs and Connectivity in the Indian Ocean World: Some Concepts and Hypotheses from Historical Anthropology.- 4. Displaced Passengers: States, Movements and Disappearances in the Indian Ocean.- II. Case Studies.- 5. The Role of Kilwa in the Trade of the Western Indian Ocean.- 6. Zanzibar, the Indian Ocean and Nineteenth-Century Global Interface.- 7. Ali Mfaume: A Comorian Hub in the Western Indian Ocean.- 8. Multifaceted Identities, Multiple Dwellings: Connectivity and Flexible Household Configurations in Zanzibar Town.- 9. A Hub of "Local Cosmopolitans": Migration and Settlement in Early Eighteenth- to Nineteenth-Century Port Louis.- 10. The Making of a Hub Society: Mauritius' Path from Port of Call to Cyber Island.- 11. Dis/Entangled Hubs: Connectivity and Disconnections in the Chagos Archipelago.- 12. Big Men Politics and Insularity in the Maldivian World of Islands.- 13. Considering the Island Capital Male' as a Hub for Health-Related Mobilities.- 14. From Salsette to Socotra: Islands across the Seas and Implications for Heritage.- 15. Serendipitous Connections: The Chinese Engagements with Sri Lanka.- 16. Changing Connectivity in a World of Small Islands: The Role of Makassar (Sulawesi) as a Hub Under Dutch Hegemony.- 17. Ambon, a Spicy Hub: Connectivity at the Fringe of the Indian Ocean.
Burkhard Schnepel is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Martin
Luther University in Halle, Germany, and a Fellow at the Max Planck
Institute of Social Anthropology.
Edward A. Alpers is Research Professor in the Department of History
at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA
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