Dissertation Information for Christine Choi Ahmed NAME: - Christine Choi Ahmed
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (1996)
ADVISORS: - Christopher Ehret
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Edward A. Alpers - Karen B. Sacks
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Before Eve was Eve: 2200 years of gendered history in East-Central Africa
Abstract: This dissertation examines over 2000 years of gendered history in what is today southeast Zaire, Zambia and parts of Malawi. The social history of Africa in early centuries has engaged the attentions of very few historians. This dissertation seeks to contribute to remedying that neglect by exploring key themes in the social history of East-Central Africa. Its chronological scope is the 2000 years between the first arrival of agricultural peoples in the region, at around the close of the last millennium B.C., up to the nineteenth century.
Another important element of this research is that Africa is a continent in which gender is an especially prominent arbiter of social and cultural roles. Transformations of gender relations are as significant to this history as are changes in political or economic relations. Gender is thus used in this study as a prism through which to view economic, social, and cultural aspects of early East-Central African history.
This study shows that peoples of five language groupings are the key actors in the history of the region: the Central Savanna; the Sabi; the Botatwe; the Nyasa subgroup of Mashariki Bantu and the Mwika, also of the Mashariki Bantu group. The cultural world established across the region by these peoples in the first millennium was greatly reshaped by the expansion from 1000 A.D. onward of Sabi peoples. Sabi language speakers spread a new and unique matrifocal cultural complex that not only transformed the parts of East-Central Africa that adopted Sabi languages, but deeply influenced most of the other peoples in the area. The testimony of this culture history is found in linguistic evidence, comparative ethnographic data, rock art and other material and cultural evidence.
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MPACT Scores for Christine Choi Ahmed A = 0
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TA = 0
calculated 2009-01-12 11:38:41
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