Nubijczycy Kenijscy z Kibery. Strategie budowania zbiorowej identyfikacji

• Authors: Magdalena Chułek

Title variants

EN

KENYAN NUBIANS IN KIBERA. STRATEGIES OF BUILDING COLLECTIVE IDENTIFICATION

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The majority of Kenyan Nubians inhabit Kibera, a neighbourhood of poverty in Nairobi, considered to be one of the largest slums in the world. The author analyses strategies employed to build collective identification of this community, used in order to survive in the multi-ethnic Kenyan state. Survival is possible because Nubians believe that they form the so-called community. This category relates to a complex set of practices, among which the behaviour of the elites are most important – they apply the discourse of group unity to their members and, particularly, to people from outside the community. This approach supplants cultural diversity of the groups, which used to live separately and which presently assimilate within the community. These intergroup differences are based on practices, which the locals define as sibir. As a result of the social unification policy of the elites it no longer is the most important distinguishing factor of the community. The strategies used to build collective identification of Nubians are based today, on the one hand, on factors stemming from sibir (such as holidays, garments or cuisine), and on the other on “new” values such as a shared history and one religion (Islam) and on their fight for the right to the “own land”, i.e. Kibera.

Keywords

EN

KENYAN NUBIANS; COLLECTIVE IDENTIFICATION; COMMUNITY; SIBIR; ELITES

• Publisher: Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze
• Journal: Lud
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 96
• Pages: 227-248

Contributors

author

Magdalena Chułek

• Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, ul. św. Marcin 78, 61-809 Poznań, Poland