Lecture 'Race and the construction of caste in precolonial Africa: a problem in comparative history'
- For whom
- Alumni , Employees , Private individuals , Students
- When
- 27-03-2025 from 10:00 to 12:00
- Where
- Paviljoen Vandenhove, Rozier 1, 9000 Ghent
- Language
- English
- Organizer
- Department of History - Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
- Contact
- dorien.slotman@ugent.be
This talk will focus on distinctions between West African categories of endogamous craft specialists known as 'castes', which in many ways converge with distinctions of race.
By investigating the construction of “caste” as a topic in precolonial intellectual history, we can see that it grew from pre-existing modes of thinking about difference, many of which were distributed far more widely than the practice of caste itself. In this sense, the history of West African “caste” resembled the construction of race' elsewhere in the world.
Jonathon Glassman, Northwestern University, has taught African history and the comparative history of race and slavery for over three decades. Among his works are Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888, which won the Herskovits Prize in African Studies, and War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar.