Publications

In this issue, we emulate the model we initiated in The MISR Review, no. 3. The bulk of the issue is a set of three lectures on a single theme; each lecture is followed by a set of comments, one or two. The lectures were organized around a single theme, Palestine as a Question, given by Raef Zreik from Tel Aviv University. The three lectures were titled: 1. Formation; 2. Justice; and 3. Decolonisation. We saw the lecture series as a way of introducing a debate on two critical questions: Israel/Palestine, and decolonisation.

This article examines why the emancipation of ethnic groups has failed to address ethnic conflicts in Uganda. Successive Ugandan governments, especially the current regime of President Yoweri Museveni, have attempted to end the country’s history of ethnic strife by creating separate constituencies, separate districts and separate kingdoms for marginalised ethnic groups to free them from the domination of powerful ethnic groups.

This paper discusses how the capital town of Eritrea, Asmara, is depicted alternately as Italian, Eritrean and Ethiopian thus showing the competing claims of ‘ownership’ that traverses its colonial and postcolonial histories and a multifaceted identity. It focuses specifically on how the Italian architecture of Asmara is depicted both as a sign of modernization and oppression.

In one of his traditions, the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him, highlighted the power of words when he said, “Indeed, there is magic in eloquence.” Shahab Ahmed exhibits this magic when he charmingly advances a radically new way of understanding Islam in his 2016 book, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Ahmed sets out to establish Islam as “a historical and human phenomenon . . . in its plentitude and complexity” and hence to “conceptualize unity [in Islam] not in diversity but in the face of outright contradiction.”

This issue appears more than a year after its scheduled publication. We have no alibis to offer, just an admission and a request that this be taken as an illustration of the continuing steep learn- ing curve at MISR.

This issue marks a step in that long journey. The bulk of the issue draws on chapters from doctoral thesis successfully defended over the past year. Haydee Bangerezako’ essay, Indirect Writing and the Construction of Burundi’s History, analyzes history writing in the era of colonial indirect rule. Because it borrowed its categories and conceptions from the colonial project, Bangerezako dubs this genre of writing ‘indirect history.’ The essay focuses on the narratives produced by African chiefs reinterpreting the past within the colonial epistemological framework.

Gender, Ethnicity, and Violence in Kenya’s Transitions to Democracy : States of Violence - Lyn Ossome

Recent scholarship on Africa recognizes the relevance of looking at the connection between Africa and the Indian Ocean realm. Focusing on one of the well-known diaspora in this region, the Yemenis, this study examines the interaction/interface between Yemeni diaspora property management (inheritance) and the colonial social order in Djibouti.

Why would reading of Muqaddimah by teachers and students in the PhD program at Makerere Institute of social Research (MISR) be of interest to a wider audience? Alternatively, Why would a reading of a 14th century North African text be of interest to academics in 21st -century Kampala? Both questions belong to a wider reflection on the subject of universalization and particularization as aspects of a single process. The universalization of particular modes of thought goes alongside the particularization of other modes of thought.