De zeekant van Lamu: een maritieme variant op het thema 'peasant culture'

Samenvatting

The seaside of Lamu. An attempt is made to explain certain characteristics of an East African sea shore society in terms of the duality peasant culture—great civilization as was done by Robert Redfield and others in Latin America and elsewhere. The Swahili speaking people with whom this paper is concerned occupy the Lamu archipelago off the coast of Northern Kenya, but roam the western coasts of the Indian Ocean in their sailing coasters or tiny fishing boats. Hence the sailors themselves, who form the peasant half of the dual society (immigrant Arabs and Indians make up for the towns component) cannot be called peasants in a narrow sense, although they share many characteristics with rustic landlubbers. Nevertheless, since they reveal a number of social traits peculiarly connected with their maritime habitat, the author suggests a new grouping of maritime peasants, thus accepting an extension of the term where Redfield refused to include e.g. the nomads of the Near East in the category, hesitating to speak of pastoral peasants. The present contribution is thought to be meaningful first on a limited scale, because of doing away with the explanatory concept of ’tribe’ for a community that cannot be comprehended or analysed on ’tribal’ lines; and further because it may open up new avenues of thought in dealing with maritime communities on the whole, whether primitive or not.