Geoffrey Ross Owens
Biographic Data
| ID | 118548 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Geoffrey Ross Owens |
| GIVEN NAMES | Geoffrey Ross |
| FAMILY NAME | Owens |
| SIGNATURE | OWENS G R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wright State University |
| ORCID | 0009-0009-2190-9380 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Semiotics and the Suburbs: A Phenomenological Analysis of Urban Frontier Settlements
The Ever-Moving Signposts of Indigenousness
We are not farmers: Dilemmas and prospects of residential suburban cultivators in contemporary Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Today, a majority of citizens of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, participate in suburban and exurban growth and development much like urbanites throughout the world. Unlike the garden suburbs of North America or Europe, Dar es Salaam's suburban residents often engage in multiple income-generating activities, the most common and conspicuous of which are cultivation and animal husbandry. The presence of urban farming has suggested that Dar es Salaam's res…
From Collective Villages to Private Ownership: Ujamaa, Tamaa, and the Postsocialist Transformation of Peri-Urban Dar es Salaam, 1970-1990
This article examines the long-term impact of Ujamaa villigization on peri-urban areas of Kinondoni District, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. President Julius K. Nyerere’s aim had been to initiate an agrarian social reformation, introducing modern technological innovations and social services to a predominantly rural population while tapping into existing perspectives congruent with his view of “traditional” African society. But the implementation of th…
The Kamba War: Foundation Narratives, Ethnogenesis, and the Invention of the Zaramo in Precolonial East Africa
This article focuses on narratives told by the Zaramo people of east central Tanzania, the largest ethnic group in the regions surrounding Dar es Salaam. Their tradition includes a founder-leader known as Pazi Kilama or Pazi Kibwe Banduka who is said to have come to the aid of the Shomvi, Swahili-speaking residents of Indian Ocean coastal settlements, who were being attacked by the Kamba people of Kenya. Subsequently, the Shomvi agreed to offer t…
Post-Colonial Migration: Virtual Culture, Urban Farming and New Peri-Urban Growth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1975-2000
Using ethnographic and historical approaches, this article examines unplanned, peri-urban settlements on Dar es Salaam's northern and western fringe, where urban farming is central to many residents' household economy. Contrasting with conventional models of African urban migration, these new districts were established by a vanguard of educated urban professionals, utilizing farming as an economic diversification strategy. Despite disjunctures ar…
Exploring the Articulation of Governmentality and Sovereignty: The Chwaka Road and the Bombardment of Zanzibar, 1895-1896
Exploring the Articulation of Governmentality and Sovereignty: The Chwaka Road and the Bombardment of Zanzibar, 1895-1896 Geoffrey Ross Owens Abstract In 1896, Khalid bin Barghash seized Zanzibar's throne, and Lloyd William Matthews ordered the bombardment of the palace, killing 500 of Khalid's followers. This article contrasts the bombardment with earlier incidents in which British-led police were threatened and attacked. The British administrat…
The Shomvi: A Precursor to Global Ethnoscapes and Indigenization in Precolonial East Africa
This article examines the precolonial history of the region surrounding Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, through oral traditions and memories about the Shomvi people, who lived in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Elite members of Shomvi settlements claimed "foreign" origins in the Middle East, Yemen, and Persia and viewed themselves as highly mobile, continually "founding" settlements throughout the region and moving back and forth between t…
The Secret History of Tanu: Rumor, Historiography and Muslim Unrest in Contemporary Dar Es Salaam
This article explores historical rumors and narratives told by Muslims of Dar es Salaam, contending that Julius Nyerere, TANU founder and first president of independent Tanzania, was an inexperienced schoolteacher thrust into the role of political activist through sponsorship of the Muslim community. This history was allegedly hidden by the current government to cover up not only Nyerere's meteoric rise to a position of leadership, but also subse…
What! Me a Spy: Intrigue and Reflexivity in Zanzibar
This article describes and attempts to analyze an incident in which the author, an anthropologist conducting research on the Solar New Year's festival in Zanzibar, is suddenly and without warning ordered out of the country. Like all human beings meaningfully engaged with others, practicing anthropologists are politically positioned within the local and global contexts in which they live and work. But the consequences of such positioning, whether …
Post-Colonial Migration: Virtual Culture, Urban Farming and New Peri-Urban Growth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1975-2000
Using ethnographic and historical approaches, this article examines unplanned, peri-urban settlements on Dar es Salaam's northern and western fringe, where urban farming is central to many residents' household economy. Contrasting with conventional models of African urban migration, these new districts were established by a vanguard of educated urban professionals, utilizing farming as an economic diversification strategy. Despite disjunctures ar…
What! Me a Spy: Intrigue and Reflexivity in Zanzibar
This article describes and attempts to analyze an incident in which the author, an anthropologist conducting research on the Solar New Year's festival in Zanzibar, is suddenly and without warning ordered out of the country. Like all human beings meaningfully engaged with others, practicing anthropologists are politically positioned within the local and global contexts in which they live and work. But the consequences of such positioning, whether …
The Shomvi: A Precursor to Global Ethnoscapes and Indigenization in Precolonial East Africa
This article examines the precolonial history of the region surrounding Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, through oral traditions and memories about the Shomvi people, who lived in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Elite members of Shomvi settlements claimed "foreign" origins in the Middle East, Yemen, and Persia and viewed themselves as highly mobile, continually "founding" settlements throughout the region and moving back and forth between t…
Exploring the Articulation of Governmentality and Sovereignty: The Chwaka Road and the Bombardment of Zanzibar, 1895-1896
Exploring the Articulation of Governmentality and Sovereignty: The Chwaka Road and the Bombardment of Zanzibar, 1895-1896 Geoffrey Ross Owens Abstract In 1896, Khalid bin Barghash seized Zanzibar's throne, and Lloyd William Matthews ordered the bombardment of the palace, killing 500 of Khalid's followers. This article contrasts the bombardment with earlier incidents in which British-led police were threatened and attacked. The British administrat…
The Secret History of Tanu: Rumor, Historiography and Muslim Unrest in Contemporary Dar Es Salaam
This article explores historical rumors and narratives told by Muslims of Dar es Salaam, contending that Julius Nyerere, TANU founder and first president of independent Tanzania, was an inexperienced schoolteacher thrust into the role of political activist through sponsorship of the Muslim community. This history was allegedly hidden by the current government to cover up not only Nyerere's meteoric rise to a position of leadership, but also subse…
The Kamba War: Foundation Narratives, Ethnogenesis, and the Invention of the Zaramo in Precolonial East Africa
This article focuses on narratives told by the Zaramo people of east central Tanzania, the largest ethnic group in the regions surrounding Dar es Salaam. Their tradition includes a founder-leader known as Pazi Kilama or Pazi Kibwe Banduka who is said to have come to the aid of the Shomvi, Swahili-speaking residents of Indian Ocean coastal settlements, who were being attacked by the Kamba people of Kenya. Subsequently, the Shomvi agreed to offer t…
We are not farmers: Dilemmas and prospects of residential suburban cultivators in contemporary Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Today, a majority of citizens of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, participate in suburban and exurban growth and development much like urbanites throughout the world. Unlike the garden suburbs of North America or Europe, Dar es Salaam's suburban residents often engage in multiple income-generating activities, the most common and conspicuous of which are cultivation and animal husbandry. The presence of urban farming has suggested that Dar es Salaam's res…
From Collective Villages to Private Ownership: Ujamaa, Tamaa, and the Postsocialist Transformation of Peri-Urban Dar es Salaam, 1970-1990
This article examines the long-term impact of Ujamaa villigization on peri-urban areas of Kinondoni District, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. President Julius K. Nyerere’s aim had been to initiate an agrarian social reformation, introducing modern technological innovations and social services to a predominantly rural population while tapping into existing perspectives congruent with his view of “traditional” African society. But the implementation of th…
What! Me a Spy: Intrigue and Reflexivity in Zanzibar
This article describes and attempts to analyze an incident in which the author, an anthropologist conducting research on the Solar New Year's festival in Zanzibar, is suddenly and without warning ordered out of the country. Like all human beings meaningfully engaged with others, practicing anthropologists are politically positioned within the local and global contexts in which they live and work. But the consequences of such positioning, whether …
The Secret History of Tanu: Rumor, Historiography and Muslim Unrest in Contemporary Dar Es Salaam
This article explores historical rumors and narratives told by Muslims of Dar es Salaam, contending that Julius Nyerere, TANU founder and first president of independent Tanzania, was an inexperienced schoolteacher thrust into the role of political activist through sponsorship of the Muslim community. This history was allegedly hidden by the current government to cover up not only Nyerere's meteoric rise to a position of leadership, but also subse…
The Shomvi: A Precursor to Global Ethnoscapes and Indigenization in Precolonial East Africa
This article examines the precolonial history of the region surrounding Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, through oral traditions and memories about the Shomvi people, who lived in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Elite members of Shomvi settlements claimed "foreign" origins in the Middle East, Yemen, and Persia and viewed themselves as highly mobile, continually "founding" settlements throughout the region and moving back and forth between t…
Exploring the Articulation of Governmentality and Sovereignty: The Chwaka Road and the Bombardment of Zanzibar, 1895-1896
Exploring the Articulation of Governmentality and Sovereignty: The Chwaka Road and the Bombardment of Zanzibar, 1895-1896 Geoffrey Ross Owens Abstract In 1896, Khalid bin Barghash seized Zanzibar's throne, and Lloyd William Matthews ordered the bombardment of the palace, killing 500 of Khalid's followers. This article contrasts the bombardment with earlier incidents in which British-led police were threatened and attacked. The British administrat…
Post-Colonial Migration: Virtual Culture, Urban Farming and New Peri-Urban Growth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1975-2000
Using ethnographic and historical approaches, this article examines unplanned, peri-urban settlements on Dar es Salaam's northern and western fringe, where urban farming is central to many residents' household economy. Contrasting with conventional models of African urban migration, these new districts were established by a vanguard of educated urban professionals, utilizing farming as an economic diversification strategy. Despite disjunctures ar…
The Kamba War: Foundation Narratives, Ethnogenesis, and the Invention of the Zaramo in Precolonial East Africa
This article focuses on narratives told by the Zaramo people of east central Tanzania, the largest ethnic group in the regions surrounding Dar es Salaam. Their tradition includes a founder-leader known as Pazi Kilama or Pazi Kibwe Banduka who is said to have come to the aid of the Shomvi, Swahili-speaking residents of Indian Ocean coastal settlements, who were being attacked by the Kamba people of Kenya. Subsequently, the Shomvi agreed to offer t…
From Collective Villages to Private Ownership: Ujamaa, Tamaa, and the Postsocialist Transformation of Peri-Urban Dar es Salaam, 1970-1990
This article examines the long-term impact of Ujamaa villigization on peri-urban areas of Kinondoni District, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. President Julius K. Nyerere’s aim had been to initiate an agrarian social reformation, introducing modern technological innovations and social services to a predominantly rural population while tapping into existing perspectives congruent with his view of “traditional” African society. But the implementation of th…
The Ever-Moving Signposts of Indigenousness
We are not farmers: Dilemmas and prospects of residential suburban cultivators in contemporary Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Today, a majority of citizens of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, participate in suburban and exurban growth and development much like urbanites throughout the world. Unlike the garden suburbs of North America or Europe, Dar es Salaam's suburban residents often engage in multiple income-generating activities, the most common and conspicuous of which are cultivation and animal husbandry. The presence of urban farming has suggested that Dar es Salaam's res…
Semiotics and the Suburbs: A Phenomenological Analysis of Urban Frontier Settlements
Sociology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (6 works) · History (5 works) · History (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (4 works) · Geography (4 works) · Law (4 works)