Boats and Boatbuilding in Tanzania (Dar‐es‐Salaam and Zanzibar)

A wide variety of traditional wooden boats and small ships can still be seen in use and being built on the mainland of Tanzania and the island of Zanzibar. This paper compares different accounts in the literature with observations made in 2012, and documents in detail the various stages of building wooden dhows on the beaches of Zanzibar.     

Say What You Like: Dress,Identity and Heritage in Zanzibar

The paper considers the significance of dress to identity and power among women living on the island of Zanzibar. Drawing on her own preliminary fieldwork in Zanzibar (June 2004) and on the work of Laura Fair (2001 Fair, L. 2001. Pastimes & Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post‐abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945, Oxford: James Currey.  [Google Scholar]), the author discusses the ways in which dress (in general), and the wearing of kanga fabrics in particular, offers women a means of communication in an image conscious and historically stratified society. It is argued that kangas are still an integral part of ritual and social activities in Zanzibar and that they shed light on the complex history of the Swahili coast. Placing the ethnography in a broader and contemporary context, the author states that kangas contribute to the intangible heritage of Zanzibar in their encapsulation of the island's oral history, art, social commentary and concepts of beauty. The author concludes by outlining some of the challenges that heritage regimes face in the Indian Ocean region and potential strategies for preserving or managing its mixed cultural resources.     

Sustainable architectural conservation according to traditions of Islamic waqf: the World Heritage–listed Stone Town of Zanzibar

Sustainability in the conservation of architectural heritage is now more extensively considered than it was decades ago. The introduction of the concept of sustainability to the field marked hopes to overcome problems threatening heritage sites. There are general concepts guiding sustainable conservation. However, heritage specifics play important roles in achieving sustainability, and may direct the formulation of sustainable concepts to be applied. This paper is an attempt to add to the discourse of heritage sustainability by discussing buildings managed through a tradition of Islamic waqf in the World Heritage Stone Town of Zanzibar. It examines sustainability in terms of its financial, social, managerial, and environmental aspects. The relatively good survival rate of waqf buildings in the old town over several centuries suggests sustainable and transmissible ‘genes’ within the tradition. Waqf was found to elaborate ways to strike a balance between heritage consumption and use, avoiding gentrification, and enabling collective urban conservation. It further suggests that sustainable conservation cannot avoid monetary sacrifices, and if it is to be sustainable in the long term it should be inherent in the heritage itself.     

Zanzibar Stone Town Joins the Imagined Community of World Heritage Sites

In 2000, Zanzibar Stone Town was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List after a long campaign whose start date may be taken as 1988. In view of the difficulties, one might ask why places such as Zanzibar should undertake such initiatives. Without recognition from UNESCO the Stone Town would be under pressure to approve developments that would change the character of this historic centre, and could make it difficult to develop tourism, but this is not the only reason. This paper argues that the supporters of Zanzibar's application to UNESCO were responding to a message that they detected in the formulation of the World Heritage Convention, namely that designated sites belong to a kind of international body which may be likened to an 'imagined community'. World Heritage Sites (WHSs) are, in theory, part of global heritage and are thus subject to the policies and laws of an international order. In reality, however, international legislation is notoriously difficult to implement without the support of the states concerned and it may be more useful to think of WHSs as an 'Imagined Community' in Anderson's sense, a kind of pre-state entity.     

The impact of the school space on research methodology,child participation and safety: views from children in Zanzibar

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the impact of school environments as research spaces on participatory research methods, children’s agency and safety. The article draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork on children’s perceptions of protection programmes in state and Qur’anic schools in Zanzibar Town. Working with ‘draw & write’ and photovoice approaches disclosed issues with children’s safety in schools and highlighted limitations of participatory research in educational spaces. Drawing on Zanzibari children’s perspectives, I suggest that to improve fragile theoretical ideals about children’s participation in participatory approaches in educational settings, research processes need cultural sensitization and conceptualization in relation to the intersecting notions of place and personhood. This, as the paper shows, needs to guide and can help develop a respectful understanding of children’s lives. This paper contributes to discussions on childhood research ethics and constructions of ‘safe research spaces’.     

The dhow as cultural icon: heritage and regional identity in the western Indian Ocean

Dhows, the traditional sailing ships of the western Indian Ocean, are currently used in museums, heritage sites and popular culture as a symbol of a regional culture in the western Indian Ocean. While scholars have embraced the notion of seas as cultural or historical units, this type of ‘basin thinking’ is a recent phenomenon in the Indian Ocean. Over the last 150 years the dhow has gone from being a despised symbol of the slave trade and economic underdevelopment to representing a romanticized past and a regional identity. This article traces the parallel development of the idea of the dhow as a symbol of regional identity and changing perceptions of both the vessels and the region it is taken to represent. It argues that recent representations of dhows as cultural heritage represent a new and developing notion of regional identity within the western Indian Ocean.