Genres in an emerging tradition [1974]

This chapter focuses on Jamaa material and the aspects of as a source of creative change. It explains the problem revealed on great lexical importance of the concept of work in mafundisho. It also demonstrates the world of labour, as experience as well as project, is thoroughly integrated into the intellectual and ritual enactment of mawazo. Labour relations are personalized, the meaning is interpreted in terms of mythical models, and the praxis is understood as realization of the thoughts of life and love, but significantly not of fecundity. If anything, the Jamaa lives in an inconsequential symbiosis with the industrial world of south Shaba Swahili. Encapsulated in the logic of amaze, the Jamaa worker is protected from the harshness, if not of economic, then of intellectual and moral exploitation. He is unlikely to be an agent for change towards better objective conditions for the African worker.