Praise for Cartography and the Political Imagination
“The Luyia defy assumptions about African ethnicity. With neither myth of common descent nor shared vernacular speech, this modern community is yet no colonial invention. These least ‘tribal’ of Kenya’s peoples mapped their own territory of civic pluralism. In this new departure in ethnic studies, Julie MacArthur persuasively subverts our conventional wisdom.”
—John Lonsdale, Emeritus Professor of Modern African History, University of Cambridge
“Cartography and the Political Imagination breaks new ground in Kenyan historiography with its focus on western Kenya. This detailed and sophisticated study argues that Luyia ethnic architects used cartography to create a demographically inclusive, politically pluralistic, and progressive cosmopolitan community. It is refreshing to read a book on Kenya that does not focus on Mau Mau or the Kikuyu. MacArthur’s exemplary study of a regional history will be indispensable to scholars of ethnogenesis and cartography in Africa and elsewhere.”
—Kenda Mutongi, Williams College
“The Luyia have long represented a potential test case for the limits to the invention of ethnicity. MacArthur’s rich study does not disappoint. It reveals how a series of external influences—land pressures, gender panic, and the drawing of administrative boundaries—led the Luyia to define themselves through appeals to locality rather than shared ancestries. Its most fascinating contribution lies in its treatment of Luyia practices of counter-mapping.”
—Paul Nugent, Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh
“MacArthur’s exploration of the historiography of ethnicity in Kenya combines theoretical sophistication with innovative and deftly interdisciplinary methodological work, along with a knack for personalized storytelling. In Cartography and the Political Imagination, MacArthur has knit together a diverse and complex array of actors, plot lines, and forms of evidence (archival, cartographic, oral), resulting in a fascinating and important piece of historical scholarship.”
—Heidi Gengenbach, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Cartography and the Political Imagination
NEW AFRICAN HISTORIES
SERIES EDITORS: JEAN ALLMAN, ALLEN ISAACMAN, AND DEREK R. PETERSON
Books in this series are published with support from the Ohio University Center for International Studies.
David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990
Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
Gary Kynoch, We Are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999
Stephanie Newell, The Forger’s Tale: The Search for Odeziaku
Jacob A. Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change: Environmental Relations in the Making of the Transkei
Jan Bender Shetler, Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present
Cheikh Anta Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya in Senegal, 1853–1913
Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS
Marissa J. Moorman, Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times
Karen E. Flint, Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820–1948
Derek R. Peterson and Giacomo Macola, editors, Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa
Moses E. Ochonu, Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression
Emily S. Burrill, Richard L. Roberts, and Elizabeth Thornberry, editors, Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa
Daniel R. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977
Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule
Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming! Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa
James R. Brennan, Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania
Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, editors, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children
David M. Gordon, Invisible Agents: Spirits in a Central African History
Allen F. Isaacman and Barbara S. Isaacman, Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965–2007
Stephanie Newell, The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa
Gibril R. Cole, The Krio of West Africa: Islam, Culture, Creolization, and Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century
Matthew M. Heaton, Black Skin, White Coats: Nigerian Psychiatrists, Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry
Meredith Terretta, Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence: Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition, and State Building in Cameroon
Paolo Israel, In Step with the Times: Mapiko Masquerades of Mozambique
Michelle R. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa
Abosede A. George, Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development in Colonial Lagos
Alicia C. Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow: Women, Gender, and Militarism in Uganda
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon
Shobana Shankar, Who Shall Enter Paradise? Christian Origins in Muslim Northern Nigeria, ca. 1890–1975
Emily S. Burrill, States of Marriage: Gender, Justice, and Rights in Colonial Mali
Todd Cleveland, Diamonds in the Rough: Corporate Paternalism and African Professionalism on the Mines of Colonial Angola, 1917–1975
Carina E. Ray, Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana
Sarah Van Beurden, Authentically African: Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture
Giacomo Macola, The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics
Lynn Schler, Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea
