Becoming Walata
Becoming Walata by Timothy Cleaveland, Cleaveland
“Becoming Walata” is a pre-colonial history of social identity in Walata, an oasis in the southwestern Sahara. Using Arabic documents, some newly discovered, Timothy Cleaveland analyzes representations of lineage, ethnicity, and race, and argues that Saharans perceived these identities as mutable. Walatis transformed themselves through strategic alliances and intermarriage, then rationalized these changes through Islam. This evidence contradicts the European colonial model of Saharan society, which portrayed social relations as static and determined by patrilineal descent.
