Rich cousins, poor cousins: hidden stratification among the Omani Arabs in Eastern Africa

Contenu

Titre

Rich cousins, poor cousins: hidden stratification among the Omani Arabs in Eastern Africa

Créateur

Le Cour Grandmaison, Colette Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur

Date

1989

Dans

Africa Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur

Résumé

Taking the al-Ḥārithī tribe from al-Sharqiyya in Oman as an example, the author describes how in the 19th century changing economic circumstances (especially slave and ivory trades) in East Africa eventually led to a hidden social stratification among the Omani Arabs in East Africa. While merchants who had become owners of plantations at Zanzibar consolidated their sources of income, newcomers belonging to the same tribe became plantation overseers and managers for their rich cousins. Those who became caravan leaders into the interior of Africa suffered from continual indebtment because of the rising costs for outfitting a caravan. The established sections of the tribe enjoyed political power and economic supremacy. Among them were religious leaders and learned men, while the continued travelling the new immigrants were forced to in order to pay off their debts led to a low level of education. But the fact that a kind of redistribution took place among the tribal sections as a result of unequal access to wealth, education and political responsibility, though confirmed by actual practices, remains unavowed in discourse and collective conscience; the descent of the nobility is an ideal, unalterable fact upheld by all the tribal sections. Hence the coexistence of two (hidden) levels which do not coincide: one the historical and economic factors which split tribal organization, and the other the collective representations which continue to maintain an egalitarian paradigm of a segmented whole.

Langue

eng

volume

59

numéro

2

pages

176-184

Source

Fonds Martin Custers Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur

Ibadica Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur

Le Cour Grandmaison, Colette, “Rich cousins, poor cousins: hidden stratification among the Omani Arabs in Eastern Africa”, 1989, bibliographie, consulté le 18 septembre 2024, https://ibadica.org/s/bibliographie/item/2452