Khat Consumption and Changing Ethnic Identities

Abstract

Some anthropologists and historians have argued that in East Africa ethnicity and tribalism were products of European colonial ideologies and policies. Hence, Chabal and Daloz in their insightful analysis of African politics, Africa Works, write that “there is now ample evidence of what has been called the ‘invention of ethnicity,’p by which is meant the ways in which it was constructed and instrumentalized during the colonial period” (Chabal & Daloz, 1999, p. 57). In Africa, the “invention of modern ethnicity” occurred as part of the imposition of the colonial state. Anthropologists were employed by the colonial governments, and sometimes ethnographers were also district commissioners or held other colonial administrative posts. Dividing the people they encountered into discrete ethnic groups was an important part of the Western creation of conceptual and physical order through classification. For example, along the East African coast, since the eighth century there have been Muslims who spoke the Swahili language and had a distinct cultural style (Beckerleg, 2004). The people making up the Swahili have diverse origins and have long intermarried. Under British rule, different groups of people were classified and ranked as Arabs, Indians, or Africans and treated differently in terms of education, permitted area of residence, and even conditions of imprisonment (Mazrui & Shariff, 1994).