James, Deborah and Nkadimeng, Geoffrey (2003) 'A sentimental attachment to the neighbourhood': African Christians and land claims in South Africa. Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History, 27 (3/4). pp. 243-262. ISSN 0165-1153
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Abstract
As part of its attempt to understand ‘an apartheid of souls’, this volume is concerned to show how mission activity, particularly that of European-based churches with close links to the expansion of Dutch/Calvinist influence, may have nurtured the local construction of race or ethnic difference in Indonesian and South African society. One well-known account of Christianity in South Africa shows how the interaction between mission and missionised produced a sharply dichotomised sense - experienced by the Tshidi Tswana as the contrast between setsivana and segoa - of difference between indigenous and imported culture. While this shows how processes devoted to undermining it may paradoxically strengthen a sense of cultural identity, what it does not yield is a sense of how Christianity, appropriated within Tswana and other African societies, furnished a means of marking internal distinctions of social class, dovetailing in unexpected ways with ethnic difference. It is such divisions - potently fusing class with ethnicity and having crucial implications for the ownership, reclaiming, and use of land - with which the present paper is concerned.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/itinerario/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2004 Institute for the History of European Expansion, Leiden University |
| Library of Congress subject classification: | H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) |
| Sets: | Research centres and groups > Centre for the Study of Human Rights Departments > Anthropology |
| Date Deposited: | 05 Feb 2008 |
| URL: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/3000/ |
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