[DEHAI] Books: Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa


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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu Jul 30 2009 - 14:26:59 EDT


http://www.ssrc.org/publications/view/EBD53B39-7257-DE11-BD80-001CC477EC70/

Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa
Miran, Jonathan

Topics: Africa
1999 IDRF fellow Jonathan Miran examines how a particular historical
conjuncture of amplified global interactions in the second half of the
nineteenth century formed and transformed society, culture and notions of
identity in the Red Sea port town of Massawa, in present-day Eritrea. By
reconstructing the social, urban, religious and cultural history of a
cosmopolitan community in a period of sweeping economic and social change
this study shows how different forms of capital were converted and
reconverted in the process of social integration, the construction of urban
power and communal authority, as well as the definition of a new moral
order. Adopting a strong comparative approach the book transgresses
traditional epistemological paradigms that have governed our understanding
of the region at large. The book offers a critique of ‘Area Studies’ as it
has been conceptualized in the past and blurs the boundaries between
‘Africa’ and the ‘Middle East’, much as the fields of African and Middle
Eastern History. Making use of a rich and wide variety of European,
Arabic-language sources, and oral data, the book explores historical
processes operating on Massawa between the local and the global. Buy from
Amazon

Published: Indiana University Press, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-253-22079-0

Citation: Miran, Jonathan, Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and
Cultural Change in Massawa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2009).

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