H-Africa  BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Africa@msu.edu (October, 1999)

Bill Bravman. _Making Ethnic Ways: Communities and Their
Transformations in Taita, Kenya, 1800-1950_. [Social History of
Africa series.] Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1998. xiv
+ 283 pp. Maps, notes, illustrations, bibliography, index, and
appendices. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-325-00102-7; $24.95 (paper),
ISBN 0-325-00104-9.

Reviewed for H-Africa by James R. Brennan, <jrbrennan@nwu.edu>,
Department of History, Northwestern University.

Making ethnicity from within

Bill Bravman's study of the development of Taita ethnicity in
southern Kenya attempts to break free from dominant
understandings of how ethnicity is formed.  He disagrees with
the assumption made explicit in the work of Frederick Barth and
implicit in most "instrumentalist" literature, that ethnicity
arises externally from interaction between different groups and
is maintained at their respective boundaries.  Bravman instead
asserts that Taita ethnicity emerged internally, becoming
naturalized "by reconfiguring people's already extant sense of,
as well as need and desire for, belonging to a community"
(p.14).  Neither a product of colonial manipulation nor
primordial links, Taita ethnicity emerged at the beginning of
the twentieth century from internal processes best treated as a
"specific form of community building" (p.4).  Thus his
theoretical burden shifts to explaining community, which he
claims to do by situating "kinship within a wider analysis of
how group belonging is constructed" (p.17).  The introduction,
meant to be a theoretical overview and statement (de rigueur in
the Heinemann series), is too narrowly confined to Africanist
works on ethnicity and his definitions mainly counterarguments
that flow from his criticisms of this literature.  A more
charitable view would be that Bravman's understanding of
ethnicity and community emerge from the body of the book rather
than from its theoretical prelude.

And this does emerge, though rather slowly.  At its heart this
book is a social history of Taita rather than a theoretical
explication on ethnicity. Organized chronologically, the book
begins with an overview of settlement in the Taita hills up to
1900.  Lineages and neighborhoods controlled by elders
structured Taita society during the nineteenth century, though
this was challenged somewhat by the rise of marauding
'vishingila' warrior bands within the Taita hills.  Community
was thus based on lineage and, to a lesser extent, neighborhood.
 Upon this fair observation Bravman goes on to assert that
"[t]he continuous seeking, fostering, and/or enforcing of
enduring affective ties metamorphosed people's structural
connections into a collective consciousness of community"
(p.42).  He makes this rather mystical leap without offering
evidence, but the argument is useful for conceptualizing later
developments.  The first European intrusion in Taita was the
establishment of a CMS mission at Sagalla in the 1880s.
Bravman attributes its initial failure to the mission's
unwillingness to adapt to resilient local forms of Taita
community.  Unable to bring wealth through trade, let alone
immortality, the mission failed to convince the people of Taita
to abandon local 'Wutasi' rituals.  This first colonial
experience not only failed to generate a larger ethnicity but
perpetuated localized forms of community based on lineage and
neighborhood.

Change however did come with the establishment of British
military presence in Taita.  The author's earlier protests
against ascribing too determinative a role to colonialism seem
at odds with the content of his two strong chapters on
Christianity and colonial administration.  The military defeats
that the Imperial British East African Company inflicted on
Taita warriors convinced people to look again at Christianity.
Conversion opened a rift between the small section of new
Christians and those who maintained 'Wutasi' rituals, crucially
not along lines of neighborhood or lineage but throughout the
Taita hills, giving rise to "a new set of distinctions:
Christian ways and local ways" (p.131).  Colonial rule brought
about administrative locations and the institution of chiefship,
both of which weakened lineage and neighborhood as social
units. Bravman writes that when the East African Protectorate
first made 'Taita' an administrative district in 1895, that
"[t]his new conceptualization of the Hills, together with a new
authority figure for it, (the District Commissioner), gave a
unitary 'Taita' its first political reality" (p.109).  Despite
the tone of Bravman's introduction, colonialism clearly had
revolutionary implications for Taita identity.

By the late 1900s and 1910s, older men began to invoke Taita
ethnicity as a meaningful identity to reconfigure their
authority in the wake of the decline of lineages and
neighborhoods.  This claim is based in large part on evidence
concerning the establishment of the Taita Council of Elders and
codification of Taita 'custom' by the colonial administration.
From this Bravman concludes that "[c]learly, Taita ethnic
discourse helped foster this elder-official alliance on the
question of controlling the young" (p.146).  The author also
argues that Taita identity merely 'coalesced' in the 1900s and
1910s, having reworked old forms of community and incorporated
new ones.  This second statement qualifies the first by
highlighting the internal dynamics of community.  This seems
somewhat a sleight of hand, because the first political
deployment of Taita ethnicity was clearly done in response to
the needs of colonial administration.  This evidence suggests
that the elder-official alliance fostered Taita ethnic
discourse, and not the other way around.  Although the material
of Taita ethnicity was generated internally, the obstacles and
opportunities of 'exogenous' colonial rule brought it to life.

Bravman does makes a compelling case that the meaning of Taita
ethnicity was generated internally during the colonial period.
Taita ethnicity took on two aspects: first as a social
birthright, and second as a normative identity based on
'KidafBida', meaning a Taita 'way of doing things'. Progressives
who found their fortunes through the church, western education
and the colonial state took up the cause of Taita ethnicity as
birthright, while those who maintained 'Wutasi' rituals
championed 'KidafBida' to reclaim their undercut political
authority.  Yet the author also demonstrates that these two
poles of social debate which he constructs--progressivism and
'KidafBida'--were complicated, contested, and changing over the
colonial period.  The secularization of education made it more
acceptable to 'KidafBida' supporters, while driving some
Christians towards revivalist movements.  The rise and
dominance of money and cash cropping, though initially resisted,
eventually led to a similar reconciliation of 'KidafBida'
adherents to the new order.  In the process the original content
of 'KidafBida' was seriously diluted, taking on a more
sentimental than constructive meaning by 1950.

This is a fine social history based primarily on interviews the
author conducted with residents of Taita in the late 1980s and
early 1990s.  It is somewhat burdened by what has become a
hallmark of the Heinemann Social History of Africa series:
numerous block quotations from interviews.  The crisp prose of
the text often summarizes the content of many quotations,
rendering their insertion simply repetitive.  Nevertheless the
oral and documentary research is impressive in its thoroughness
and precision.  One also wonders about the larger utility of
this approach to ethnicity for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa,
especially as Taita's experiences are by no means unique.

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