Doing Family, Gender, Religion and Raced Identities across Generations: A Narrative Ethnography on Ismaili Women of Indian East African Heritage

Abstract

Abstract Drawing from a narrative ethnography, this paper provides insight into the ways Nizari Ismaili women of Indian East African heritage constructed and performed their mutually-constitutive identities in specific networks of power and hierarchy, and the local knowledges they have produced and passed on to their children. Having lived in Mozambique during the final decades of Portuguese colonialism, the six women interviewed were exposed to contradictory and ambivalent modernizing forces amplified by postcolonial migration processes. The analysis of their biographies and caregiving repertoires involved an intersectional framing to explore the links between identities, boundaries and hierarchy, combined with a multilevel conception of ambivalence addressing the dialectic intersection between the multiple sources of ambivalence in social life. The conclusion highlights how the contradictory structures and ideologies they navigated offered them resources for producing intergenerational transformative outcomes.