Ethnic patriotism and the East African Revival
Subtitle: a social history of dissent, c. 1935 to 1972
By: Derek R. Peterson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Series: African studies series -- 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9781107021167
Subjects: Conversion; East Africa Revival; Christianity and culture; Christianity and politics; HISTORY / Africa / General; Christianity; Church history; History
Description: "This book focuses on the struggle between cosmopolitan Christian converts and east African patriots to define culture and community in the mid-twentieth century"--

"Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival shows how, in the era of African political independence, cosmopolitan Christian converts struggled with east Africa's patriots over the definition of culture and community. The book traces the history of the East African Revival, an evangelical movement that spread through much of eastern and central Africa. Its converts offered a subversive reading of culture, disavowing their compatriots and disregarding their obligations to kin. They earned the ire of east Africa's patriots, who worked to root people in place as inheritors of ancestral wisdom. This book casts religious conversion in a new light: not as an inward reorientation of belief, but as a political action that opened up novel paths of self-narration and unsettled the inventions of tradition"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction: the pilgrims' politics; 2. The infrastructure of cosmopolitanism; 3. Religious movements in southern Uganda; 4. Civil society in Buganda; 5. Taking stock: conversion and accountancy in Bugufi; 6. Patriotism and dissent in western Kenya; 7. The politics of moral reform in northwestern Tanganyika; 8. Subjects of the law: conversion and court procedure; 9. Casting characters: autobiography and political argument in central Kenya; 10. Confession, slander, and civic virtue in Mau Mau detention camps; 11. Contests of time in western Uganda; Conclusion: pilgrims and patriots in contemporary east Africa; Bibliography.