Kai Kresse
Biographic Data
| ID | 102703 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kai Kresse |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kai |
| FAMILY NAME | Kresse |
| SIGNATURE | KRESSE K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of St Andrews |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 108 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 5 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Governance and Islam in East Africa
Recent studies of Muslims in Kenya and Tanzania have tended either to examine governance of Muslims in relation to security issues, or to discuss the reforms attempted within communities and their implications for Muslim theology, rituals and general welfare. Both these approaches are covered in this book, and a third is added – the study of Muslims as citizens or residents of their respective countries, looking at their activities and attitudes …
Religious Plurality in Africa
Grounded in ethnographic and historiographic research and taking a cross-regional approach, this book explores the complex dynamics of similarity and difference, rapprochement and detachment, and divergence and competition between practitioners of Christianity, Islam and African religious traditions. Across Africa, Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of African religious traditions live in shared settings, demarcating themselves in opposition …
Religious Plurality in Africa
Beyond Vicious Circles in the Kenyan Post-colony? On the Value of Discursive Space
In post-colonial Kenya, the relationships between Muslims and the state, run by Christian and up-country governments ranked around the respective presidents (Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta), have for the most part been fraught with tension since independence.The indigenous Kenyan Somalis, Swahilis and Arabs (of Omani and Hadrami descent) were from early on viewed as peripheral to the newly independent nation, as Ke…
Maulidi Celebrations on the Northern Swahili Coast
Overall, the chapter seeks to capture and convey a sense of fundamental ambivalence that characterizes and accompanies maulidi performances and social experiences of different kinds of social actors on the Swahili coast, as they move between pious dedication and vivid and boisterous worldly partying. In Lamu, on the Northern Swahili coast in Kenya, the ambivalence of maulidi celebrations is present on different levels of social life and public di…
Swahili language and literature as resources for Indian Ocean studies
In this contribution, our common point of convergence as an anthropologist and a literary scholar is to see Swahili language, literature and other texts as interwoven with the depth, scope, and complex dynamics of human experience and social life on the East Africa coast, with its long history of Islam. This includes prominently a view as to how this relates or is integral to the larger Indian Ocean world. Swahili language and its genres have bee…
Island in the Stream
Reviewed by: Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte by Michael Lambek Kai Kresse Michael Lambek, Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. 376 pp. "If ethnography is about anything it is surely about human being-in-the-world." —Michael Lambek (2018:281) Michael Lambek, one of the most thoughtful and stimulating anthropologists of our time, presents us with a fascinating…
Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience
Guidance (Uwongozi) by Sheikh al-Amin Mazrui
Guidance (Uwongozi) by Sheikh al-Amin Mazrui
Sheikh al-Amin Mazrui wrote his essays of this Guidance (Uwongozi) collection in Mombasa between 1930 and 1932, providing social critique and moral guidance to Kenya’s coastal Muslims during a period of their decline during British colonial rule. The essays were initially published as a series of double-sided pamphlets called Sahifa (The Page), the first Swahili Islamic newspaper. Inspired by contemporary debates of Pan-Islam and Islamic modernis…
Abdilatif Abdalla
Kenya
The pamphletKenya: Twendapi?(Kenya: Where are we heading?) is a text often referred to but rarely read or analysed. Abdilatif Abdalla wrote it as a twenty-two-year-old political activist of the KPU opposition as a critique of the dictatorial tendencies of Jomo Kenyatta and his KANU government in 1968, and consequently suffered three years of isolation in prison. Many (at least on the East African political and literary scene) know aboutKenya: Twe…
Introduction
This text introduces the Kitabkhana book discussion platform on Isabel Hofmeyr's Gandhi's Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading. After positioning Hofmeyr's research within the wider field of Indian Ocean studies, it sketches out, in comparison, the contributions of the five commentaries by Anne K. Bang, James R. Brennan, Gail M. Presbey, Lakshmi Subramanian, and Goolam Vahed
 African Humanismâ and a Case Study from the Swahili Coast
On the Skills to Navigate the World, and Religion, for Coastal Muslims in Kenya
Chapter 3 Interrogating “Cosmopolitanism” in an Indian Ocean Setting
Enduring relevance
Na confluência entre história e linguistica
.
Knowledge and Intellectual Practice in A Swahili Context
This article investigates 'wisdom' from an ethnographic perspective that pays attention to the ways in which knowledge is performed, appreciated, negotiated and questioned in everyday life in Mombasa, on the Swahili coast. It discusses thebarazasetting (daily meeting points for male social peers) as a venue for intellectual practice and the appreciation of wisdom. Basic features of communicative interaction identified there can also be found to b…
Knowledge in Practice
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya
This paper investigates Muslim politics in its wider social context in postcolonial Kenya, with a historical focus mainly on the Moi era (1978-2002). Hereby, I look at the introduction, integration, and internal constestation of Islamic reformist ideologies in Swahili discourse and in social practice. Central to my argument about the interconnections between Muslim politics, national politics, and coastal sociality is the notion of a 'knowledge e…
Philosophising in Mombasa
Philosophising in Mombasa provides an approach to the anthropological study of philosophical discourses in the Swahili context of Mombasa, Kenya. In this historically established Muslim environment, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, philosophy is investigated as social discourse and intellectual practice, situated in everyday life. This is done from the perspective of an 'anthropology of philosophy', a project which is spelled out in the o…
Ahmad Nassir’s poetical moral theory Utu – how human beings ought to behave
This chapter deals with the classic philosophical questions of what is humanity (signifying the field of philosophical anthropology) and what is goodness (characterising moral theory). It provides illustrations from Swahili social discourse, using sayings and the expressed convictions of ordinary people. There is a shared common body of knowledge about what it means to be ‘human’ or ‘good’ within the wider Swahili-speaking community. The chapter …
Practising an Anthropology of Philosophy
Between Africa and India
Scholarship on the Indian Ocean is generally comparative in its approach. In this paper, we draw from our research experiences on the Swahili and Gujarati coasts in order to discuss some of the epistemological consequences of comparison for the ways in which East Africa and Western India have been understood. We critically examine the frames and terms of comparison in the work of the historian Thomas Metcalf and the anthropologists A.H.J. Prins, …
Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya
This paper investigates Muslim politics in its wider social context in postcolonial Kenya, with a historical focus mainly on the Moi era (1978-2002). Hereby, I look at the introduction, integration, and internal constestation of Islamic reformist ideologies in Swahili discourse and in social practice. Central to my argument about the interconnections between Muslim politics, national politics, and coastal sociality is the notion of a 'knowledge e…
Philosophising in MombasaKnowledge, Islam and Intellectual Practice on the Swahili Coast
This book provides an approach to the anthropological study of philosophical discourses in the Swahili context of Mombasa, Kenya. In this historically established Muslim environment, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, philosophy is investigated as social discourse and intellectual practice, situated in everyday life. This is done from the perspective of an ‘anthropology of philosophy’, a project that is spelt out in the opening chapter. Ent…
Swahili Enlightenment'? East African Reformist Discourse at the Turning Point
This article discusses Sheikh Muhammad Kasim Mazrui, an influential yet largely ignored figure within East African Islamic reformism, which shifted from internal to external domination in the second half of the 20th century. His educational booklet 'Hukumu za sharia', written in Kiswahili, is analysed and contextualised. Advising local Muslims, by way of clear argument and reference to authoritative texts, on how to deal with controversial local …
Knowledge and Intellectual Practice in A Swahili Context
This article investigates 'wisdom' from an ethnographic perspective that pays attention to the ways in which knowledge is performed, appreciated, negotiated and questioned in everyday life in Mombasa, on the Swahili coast. It discusses thebarazasetting (daily meeting points for male social peers) as a venue for intellectual practice and the appreciation of wisdom. Basic features of communicative interaction identified there can also be found to b…
Kenya
The pamphletKenya: Twendapi?(Kenya: Where are we heading?) is a text often referred to but rarely read or analysed. Abdilatif Abdalla wrote it as a twenty-two-year-old political activist of the KPU opposition as a critique of the dictatorial tendencies of Jomo Kenyatta and his KANU government in 1968, and consequently suffered three years of isolation in prison. Many (at least on the East African political and literary scene) know aboutKenya: Twe…
Knowledge in Practice
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful
Barry Hallen, The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse about Values in Yoruba Culture.Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001, 256 pp., US39.95, ISBN 0 253 33806 9 hard covers, US$17.95 (£12.95), 0 253 21416 5 paperback. - Volume 73 Issue 2
Izibongo - the political art of praising
This paper presents Zulu praise-poetry, izibongo, as a genre of fundamental political and socio-regulative relevance, an interpretation which within Zulu society seems to have been continually valid until today. The central feature of izibongo in this perspective concerns the ambiguous status of language in praising: in one and the same poem, it can also be used for the sake of public criticism. This is not only due to the logical possibilities o…
Between Africa and India
Scholarship on the Indian Ocean is generally comparative in its approach. In this paper, we draw from our research experiences on the Swahili and Gujarati coasts in order to discuss some of the epistemological consequences of comparison for the ways in which East Africa and Western India have been understood. We critically examine the frames and terms of comparison in the work of the historian Thomas Metcalf and the anthropologists A.H.J. Prins, …
Swahili language and literature as resources for Indian Ocean studies
In this contribution, our common point of convergence as an anthropologist and a literary scholar is to see Swahili language, literature and other texts as interwoven with the depth, scope, and complex dynamics of human experience and social life on the East Africa coast, with its long history of Islam. This includes prominently a view as to how this relates or is integral to the larger Indian Ocean world. Swahili language and its genres have bee…
Reading Mudimbe, applying 'Mudimbe', turning an insider out
This article discusses the application of 'Mudimbe' – here shorthand for an influential body of scholarship (just like 'Foucault' or 'Kant') produced by Mudimbe – within research on postcolonial African language literatures. This is done with regard to a particular case study from the Swahili context, namely Nicholas Brown's discussion of a didactic poem by Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany, on the social functions and values of the coconut-tree. Following 'M…
Reading Mudimbe' - An introduction
the most generous, yet the simplest of dreams: to rethink the roles that history as ideology plays in human interactions (Mudimbe 1992: 445). The papers of this collection were originally present
Izibongo - the political art of praising
This paper presents Zulu praise-poetry, izibongo, as a genre of fundamental political and socio-regulative relevance, an interpretation which within Zulu society seems to have been continually valid until today. The central feature of izibongo in this perspective concerns the ambiguous status of language in praising: in one and the same poem, it can also be used for the sake of public criticism. This is not only due to the logical possibilities o…
The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful
Barry Hallen, The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse about Values in Yoruba Culture.Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001, 256 pp., US39.95, ISBN 0 253 33806 9 hard covers, US$17.95 (£12.95), 0 253 21416 5 paperback. - Volume 73 Issue 2
Swahili Enlightenment'? East African Reformist Discourse at the Turning Point
This article discusses Sheikh Muhammad Kasim Mazrui, an influential yet largely ignored figure within East African Islamic reformism, which shifted from internal to external domination in the second half of the 20th century. His educational booklet 'Hukumu za sharia', written in Kiswahili, is analysed and contextualised. Advising local Muslims, by way of clear argument and reference to authoritative texts, on how to deal with controversial local …
Reading Mudimbe, applying 'Mudimbe', turning an insider out
This article discusses the application of 'Mudimbe' – here shorthand for an influential body of scholarship (just like 'Foucault' or 'Kant') produced by Mudimbe – within research on postcolonial African language literatures. This is done with regard to a particular case study from the Swahili context, namely Nicholas Brown's discussion of a didactic poem by Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany, on the social functions and values of the coconut-tree. Following 'M…
Reading Mudimbe' - An introduction
the most generous, yet the simplest of dreams: to rethink the roles that history as ideology plays in human interactions (Mudimbe 1992: 445). The papers of this collection were originally present
Philosophising in Mombasa
Philosophising in Mombasa provides an approach to the anthropological study of philosophical discourses in the Swahili context of Mombasa, Kenya. In this historically established Muslim environment, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, philosophy is investigated as social discourse and intellectual practice, situated in everyday life. This is done from the perspective of an 'anthropology of philosophy', a project which is spelled out in the o…
Ahmad Nassir’s poetical moral theory Utu – how human beings ought to behave
This chapter deals with the classic philosophical questions of what is humanity (signifying the field of philosophical anthropology) and what is goodness (characterising moral theory). It provides illustrations from Swahili social discourse, using sayings and the expressed convictions of ordinary people. There is a shared common body of knowledge about what it means to be ‘human’ or ‘good’ within the wider Swahili-speaking community. The chapter …
Practising an Anthropology of Philosophy
Philosophising in Mombasa
Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany Swahili poetry and the conservation of cultural knowledge
Historically, poetry and its performance were applied to a wide range of incidents in Swahili social life. Swahili poetry has long been used for Islamic and social education, as well as for ideological attacks between political or religious opponents. Reformist poets, for instance, railed against the supposed enemies of ‘pure’ Islam, such as the traditional healers practising divination or spirit-possession. This chapter presents an epigraph char…
The Swahili context Mombasa, the Old Town and Kibokoni
Philosophising in MombasaKnowledge, Islam and Intellectual Practice on the Swahili Coast
This book provides an approach to the anthropological study of philosophical discourses in the Swahili context of Mombasa, Kenya. In this historically established Muslim environment, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, philosophy is investigated as social discourse and intellectual practice, situated in everyday life. This is done from the perspective of an ‘anthropology of philosophy’, a project that is spelt out in the opening chapter. Ent…
Islam and the prayer economy
Knowledge and Intellectual Practice in A Swahili Context
This article investigates 'wisdom' from an ethnographic perspective that pays attention to the ways in which knowledge is performed, appreciated, negotiated and questioned in everyday life in Mombasa, on the Swahili coast. It discusses thebarazasetting (daily meeting points for male social peers) as a venue for intellectual practice and the appreciation of wisdom. Basic features of communicative interaction identified there can also be found to b…
Knowledge in Practice
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya
This paper investigates Muslim politics in its wider social context in postcolonial Kenya, with a historical focus mainly on the Moi era (1978-2002). Hereby, I look at the introduction, integration, and internal constestation of Islamic reformist ideologies in Swahili discourse and in social practice. Central to my argument about the interconnections between Muslim politics, national politics, and coastal sociality is the notion of a 'knowledge e…
Enduring relevance
Na confluência entre história e linguistica
.
On the Skills to Navigate the World, and Religion, for Coastal Muslims in Kenya
Chapter 3 Interrogating “Cosmopolitanism” in an Indian Ocean Setting
 African Humanismâ and a Case Study from the Swahili Coast
Introduction
This text introduces the Kitabkhana book discussion platform on Isabel Hofmeyr's Gandhi's Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading. After positioning Hofmeyr's research within the wider field of Indian Ocean studies, it sketches out, in comparison, the contributions of the five commentaries by Anne K. Bang, James R. Brennan, Gail M. Presbey, Lakshmi Subramanian, and Goolam Vahed
Abdilatif Abdalla
Kenya
The pamphletKenya: Twendapi?(Kenya: Where are we heading?) is a text often referred to but rarely read or analysed. Abdilatif Abdalla wrote it as a twenty-two-year-old political activist of the KPU opposition as a critique of the dictatorial tendencies of Jomo Kenyatta and his KANU government in 1968, and consequently suffered three years of isolation in prison. Many (at least on the East African political and literary scene) know aboutKenya: Twe…
Guidance (Uwongozi) by Sheikh al-Amin Mazrui
Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (22 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · History (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Linguistics (17 works) · African history and culture analysis (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Swahili (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Geography (11 works)