Mumiani Season
Visual Aspects of a South Coast Kenyan Rumor
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2163635 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Zebulon Dingley (0000-0002-2219-0250, Twitter (United States), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 229-248 |
| Publication date | 2023-05-27 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Visual Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0894-9468 • E-ISSN: 1545-5920 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/08949468.2023.2203295 |
| OpenAlex | W4377100390 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 30 |
This article analyzes visual aspects of an otherwise verbal communicative genre: rumor. The focus is an episode of public panic in southern coastal Kenya in 2013, about “mumiani”—politically connected gangs said to murder children for their eyes. I argue that widespread defacement of public images during the panic expressed dimensions of mumiani imaginaries that went unspoken in the verbal spread of rumors about them. These defaced images—the eyes of which were scratched out—also evoked regional cultural motifs relating to power, value and rain, expressing in a visual modality both the content of contemporary mumiani fears and the historical associations that make such rumors plausible
Anxiety · Cognition · Kenya · Media studies · Mental image · Panic · Political science · Public relations · Rumor · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Computer Science · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Psychology
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| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |