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Social Science Cultural

Island in the Stream

An Ethnographic History of Mayotte

by (author) Michael Lambek

foreword by Michael D. Jackson

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2018
Category
Cultural, 20th Century, General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487503918
    Publish Date
    Oct 2018
    List Price
    $95.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487522995
    Publish Date
    Oct 2018
    List Price
    $46.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487519056
    Publish Date
    Nov 2018
    List Price
    $46.95

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Description

Island in the Stream introduces an original genre of ethnographic history as it follows a community on Mayotte, an East African island in the Mozambique Channel, through eleven periods of fieldwork between 1975 and 2015. Over this 40-year span Mayotte shifted from a declining and neglected colonial backwater to a full département of the French state. In a highly unusual postcolonial trajectory, citizens of Mayotte demanded this incorporation within France rather than joining the independent republic of the Comoros. The Malagasy-speaking Muslim villagers Michael Lambek encountered in 1975 practiced subsistence cultivation and lived without roads, schools, electricity, or running water; today they are educated citizens of the EU who travel regularly to metropolitan France and beyond.

 

Offering a series of ethnographic slices of life across time, Island in the Stream highlights community members' ethical engagement in their own history as they looked to the future, acknowledged the past, and engaged and transformed local forms of sociality, exchange, and ritual performance. This is a unique account of the changing horizons and historical consciousness of an African community and an intimate portrait of the inhabitants and their concerns, as well as a glimpse into the changing perspective of the ethnographer.

About the authors

Michael Lambek holds a Canada Research Chair in Anthropology of Ethical Life at the University of Toronto and is the author of Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action (Fordham University Press, 2010) and The Ethical Condition: Essays on Action, Person, and Value (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

Michael Lambek's profile page

Michael D. Jackson is a New Zealand poet and anthropologist who has taught in anthropology departments at Massey University, the Australian National University, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of Copenhagen. He is a religion professor at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, USA.

Michael D. Jackson's profile page

Awards

  • Winner, 2019 Elliott P. Skinner Book Award awarded by the Association for Africanist Anthropology

Editorial Reviews

"It is clear that Lambek’s way of relating to ‘his’ islanders – giving full scope to emotions and mutual efforts toward understanding – and his special talent in relating such small-scale events to wide philosophical horizons have produced another beautiful book, opening up new perspectives on time and how people – both anthropologists but also ‘their’ people – can deal with time."

<em>Anthropologica</em>