Who Are You? Africa and Africans

Bibliographic Data

ID23705236
AuthorsBrent D Shaw (corresponding author)
Year2014
Pages527-540
Publication date2014-08-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeOTHER
VenueA Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean (JOURNAL)
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/9781118834312.ch35
OpenAlexW1552685502
ISBN9781118834312
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited9

The idea of being an “African” as an identity that was shared by persons living in the Roman period Maghrib was one that emerged only slowly. How and why did this happen? The following investigation seeks to answer this question. It also considers the ancillary function of smaller regional ethnic names of the time, such as Nicibes and Sububures, and the relationship of these lesser identities to the occasional efflorescence of larger identities, including that of being an African. The appearance of other large group identities in the Roman and post-Roman Maghrib, such as Maurus (or Moor) and Berber, indicates other processes that must be analyzed separately. The place of modern hypothetical frames for understanding these problems, from Barth to Brubaker, is considered, but the utility of other, sometimes neglected, analytical approaches from Ibn Khaldûn to Russian ethnographers of the Soviet period is also suggested.

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Ethnic group · Ethnography · Genealogy · Geography · Identity (music) · Period (music) · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Classical Antiquity Studies · Gender Studies · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis