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Abstract
In examining the burgeoning practices of conspicuous consumption of imported commodities in contemporary Zanzibar Town, this contribution seeks to go beyond simplifying interpretations of non-Western consumerism by focusing on the significance of aesthetics and beauty in Zanzibar's social life. Following Alfred Gell, aesthetics is seen as a “technology of enchantment”. It deploys its effectiveness in an agonistic as well as unifying sense in the course of ceremonial exchanges of the gift of beauty, which in turn serves as a veiled disclosure of socioeconomic and moral values in a Muslim world characterised by the habitus of “covering”. It is argued that the topic of aesthetics, which is mostly neglected by anthropology, provides a clue to a deeper understanding of key processes of constructing difference and value, as well as of community building in Swahili societies. Such a perspective reveals specific, culturally shaped patterns not only of consumerism, but also of relating to the social and material world which cannot be subsumed under Western models.
Notes
1. My fieldwork in Zanzibar was conducted in 2006 in the context of a research project based at the Chair of Anthropology, University of Bayreuth. I wish to express my thanks to the German Research Society for funding the project, and to Sabine Lang for the translation.
2. Cf. particularly Horton and Middleton, Swahili; Pouwels, Horn and Crescent; Prestholdt, Domesticating the World.
3. Laura Fair has already dedicated some important studies to consumption and popular culture in colonial Zanzibar. Cf. Fair, Pastimes and Politics; Fair, “It's Just No Fun.”
4. Theoretical approaches range all the way from phenomenological ones (e.g., Ingold, Perception of the Environment) to Daniel Miller's dialectical approach (Miller, Materiality), the concept of a “dividual” or “distributed person” (e.g., Gell, Art and Agency; Strathern, Gender of the Gift), and to Latour's revision of the Cartesian ontology itself in We Have Never Been Modern, according to which there are no subjects and objects, but only “hybrids”.
5. Cf., among others, Campbell, Romantic Ethic; Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism; Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity.
6. See also Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, 88–116; Parkin, “Nemi.”
7. In reality, most imported things locally conceived as “Arab” or “European” nowadays come from Southeast and East Asia, often via Dubai.
8. Cf., for example, the concept of “colonial mimicry” developed by Homi Bhabha, Location of Culture, 121–31. For an anthropological perspective, see Appadurai, Modernity at Large.
9. Cf. with regard to consumption Colloredo-Mansfeld, “Consumption”; Hahn, Consumption in Africa.
10. Hahn, “Appropriation”, 71.
11. For African examples see, among others, Fardon et al., Modernity on a Shoestring; Hahn, Consumption in Africa; Newell, “Migratory Modernity.” With regard to Zanzibar Town, see Burgess, “Cinema, Bell Bottoms.” Recent historical research shows that even in the “West” consumerism is only one of various modes of consumption; see Trentmann, “Modern Genealogy.”
12. Cf. Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class; Simmel, “Philosophie der Mode”; Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes; Douglas and Isherwood, World of Goods.
13. Cf., for example, Ingold, Key Debates, 249–93.
14. Baumgarten, Meditationes, § CXVI; Baumgarten, Aesthetica, § 1.
15. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, §§ 1–8. However, Kant is not concerned with immediate sensible perception, but with the latter's “pure” principles – time and space – which pre-structure experience and which in his view are existing a priori in the mind.
16. Kant, Critique of Judgement, §§ 1–22.
17. Kant, Critique of Judgement, § 9.
18. Cf. with regard to morality Kant, Critique of Judgement, § 59.
19. Cf. also Parkin, “Blank Banners.”
20. Ghaidan, Lamu, 75–6.
21. Cf., for example, Bourdieu's classic example of the Kabyle house in Esquisse, chap. 2; for the Swahili, Donley-Reid, “Structuring Structure.” However, Myers already describes a much more differentiated and flexible use of social space in Zanzibar Town (Reconstructing Ng'ambo, 154–62).
22. Bourdieu, Outline, 83.
23. Cf. also Ivanov, “Verschleierung als Praxis.” “Veiled” language and communication in the coastal societies have already been discussed by various authors, including Bacuez, De Zanzibar à Kilwa; Hirsch, Pronouncing & Persevering; Swartz, Way the World is. The interpretation of “covering” as habitus, however, goes beyond pure communication or discourse.
24. Cf. for the different positions with regard to whether women are attributed honour at the Swahili coast: Hirsch, Pronouncing & Persevering, 48–9, 296 n. 32; Bacuez, De Zanzibar à Kilwa, 208–30; Swartz, Way the World is, 157–75; Middleton, World of the Swahili, 192–4.
25. Middleton, World of the Swahili, 194; Mauss, “Essai sur le don.”
26. In the final analysis, the same is true for everyday life; this, however, cannot be elaborated here.
27. Udi is made of agarwood with an admixture of perfume oils.
28. Strathern, “The Self in Self-Decoration.”
29. Cf. also Middleton, World of the Swahili, 141–56. Of course, the groom is reincorporated into society as an adult as well, but this is less stressed in ritual.
30. Cf. also Fair, Pastimes and Politics, 74–109.
31. Cf. Appadurai, “Introduction”, 18–27.
32. Cf. Caton, “Peaks of Yemen”, 27–8, 35.
33. Cf. already Meneley, Tournaments of Value, with regard to Yemen.
34. Cf. Kanafani, Aesthetics and Ritual, 100–1.
35. Foucault, Order of Things.
36. Latour, “Opening one Eye”; Foucault, Order of Things.
37. Latour, “Opening one Eye”, 22–3.
38. Cf. Simmel, “Philosophie der Mode”; Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes.
39. Bourdieu, Distinction.
40. As has already been done by Meneley, Tournaments of Value, with regard to Yemen.
41. Appadurai, “Introduction”, 21.
42. Cf. also Ivanov, “Cosmopolitanism or Exclusion?”
43. Cf. also Horton and Middleton, Swahili, 196–7.
44. The socioscape that is embodied can also be partially imaginative: cf. Ivanov, “Cosmopolitism or Exclusion?”
45. Cf. especially Glassman, “Slower Than a Massacre”; Glassman, War of Words.
46. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft, 211–59.
47. For both quotations: ibid., 214; translation by Sabine Lang.
48. Cf. Bourdieu, Esquisse d'une théorie, chap. 1; quotation ibid., 24.
49. Cf. also Beidelmann, “Agonistic Exchange.” The agonistic character of gift exchange has been already stressed by Mauss, “Essai sur le don.”
50. Bourdieu, Outline, 194–5.
51. Bourdieu, Distinction; Bourdieu and Darbel, Love of Art.
52. Gell, “Enchantment of Technology”, 43.
53. Gell, Art and Agency, 68–72, 95.
54. Gell, Art and Agency, 69–72; Gell, “Enchantment of Technology”, 44–6.
55. Cf. Fuglesang, Veils and Videos, 127; Werner and Hichens, Advice, stanzas 8–9; Biersteker, “Language, Poetry, and Power”, 71–2.
56. Gell, Art and Agency, 68.
57. Two kinds of fragrant leaves.
58. Khamis, “Images of Love”, 37–8; his translation.
59. For purposes of complete veiling, women will nowadays wear a black, floor-length buibui coat, a headscarf (mtandio or hijab), and a face veil. The former style of complete veiling (kizorro, a term derived from the Zorro movies) could be created situationally by manipulating the manner of wearing the older type of buibui cloak.
60. Fair, Pastimes and Politics, 64–109; Ivanov, “Verschleierung als Praxis”, 142.
61. Cf., for example, the proverb Nyumba husitiri mambo, “The house conceals matters.”
62. Cf. Foucault, Discipline & Punish, chap. 3.