Book
Siaya: the historical anthropology of an African landscape
Heinemann Kenya • Nairobi • Published In 1989 • Pages:
By: Cohen, David William, Atiendo Odhiambo, E. S..
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This book is concerned with the social history of the Luo of Western Kenya. Focusing on the lived experiences of men and women in Siaya, a district bordering Uganda, the book provides Luo debates and Luo ideas about their own past and present. The book also contrast the visions of these Luo men and women with the findings, arguments and questions produced about the Luo by professional anthropologists and historians writing not for the Luo but for their own disciplines. For this contrast, the authors focus on a sequence of selected issues including the physical landscape and the reworking of the landscape over several centuries, the social impulses and intellectual processes producing broad collective identities, the multiple and overlapping settings of cultural activity, the sources and effects of food scarcity and the images and ideas to which it gives rise, the powers of women, and the ambiguities of education. The book shows that debates about these issues among ordinary Luo men and women are older than the twentieth century. It argues that these debates have to do more with longstanding and heavily fought local questions relating to of history and cultural meanings than recent responses to modern schooling and contacts with the outside world.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Community structure
- Travel
- Cities
- Cultural identity and pride
- Inter-ethnic relations
- Labor supply and employment
- Urban and rural life
- Social relationships and groups
- Friendships
- Internal trade
- Classes
- Household
- Production and supply
- Income and demand
- Mode of marriage
- Polygamy
- Gender status
- Music
- External relations
- Education system
- Missions
- Political parties
- Kinship regulation of sex
- Techniques of socialization
- Real property
- Land use
- Saving and investment
- Accumulation of wealth
- Acculturation and culture contact
- Sociocultural trends
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Luo
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2010
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Africa
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Eastern Africa
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypesThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Anthropologist
- Historian
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Teferi Abate Adem; 2009
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1978-1982
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1900-1989
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Siaya, Luoland, Kenya
- NotesAdditional notes
- David William Cohen, E.S. Atiendo Odhiambo
- Includes bibliographical references ( p. 141-149)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 90981259
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Luo (Kenyan and Tanzanian people)