| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sub-Saharan Africa

Laura Fair. Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945. (East African Studies.) Athens: Ohio University Press and Oxford: James Currey. 2001. Pp. xvi, 370. Cloth $59.95, paper $24.95.

Laura Fair's densely informative study is a particularly good demonstration of the considerable dividends that have been earned by social history through its steady incorporation of some of the topical and analytic concerns of cultural history. Fair's monograph is comprised of four intricately developed essays focused on the East African island of Zanzibar under European colonial rule, connected through consistent thematic address to questions of identity and social hierarchy, particularly gender. Fair effectively interweaves some of the bread-and-butter interests of social history—such as land tenure and labor unrest—with discussions of dress, consumption, musical performance, and leisure. At the heart of her monograph lies the early twentieth-century musician Siti Binti Saad and her taarab band, whose performances frame and connect much of the history that Fair examines.

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