Brad Weiss's Research

These photos were taken in 1999 and 2000 in the town of Arusha, Tanzania (East Africa). All are Barber Shops, also known as Barber Houses, Cutting Salons and Saloons In Swahili, each is a "Kinyozi"

There are literally hundreds of barbershops throughout Arusha - often more than a dozen in a single city block. They are important hubs for the circulation of a wide variety of media, consumer goods, and neighborhood gossip.

Many shops are less than a hundred square feet in size, yet even the smallest will have a radio -
and more than a few have satellite TV hook-ups. The remarkable portrait art you see is a feature of even
the simplest "kinyozi" constructed from scrap lumber.

It's interesting to note some contrasts in barbershops and hair salons (also widely known in Arusha - as in much of Anglophone Africa - as "Saloons"). As the pictures here illiustrate, men's kinyozi (many of which have
women as clients) make use of a much wider array of images and celebrity "icons" on the order of
Michael Jordan, Will Smith, and Tupac Shakur.

Many of the most widely produced paintings of women that promote women's salons (conversely, never visited by men) take their images from posters and packaging provided by Dark & Lovely, an American hair-care product widely available throughout town (and often sold in the salons, as well).

The interiors of barbershops are almost always more ornate than hair salons. Men's styles seek to promote a highly visible appearance, one that enhances a reputation -
perhaps especially a notorious one - of the person,

while women's styles emphasize "elegance" and "naturalness" as central features of beauty.

Like "Classic Hair Cutting" and "Death Row Barber House," kinyozi and saloons are all known by English names; and a great many of them make reference to a thoroughly international geography: "California Hair Cutting," "Liverpool Barbers," "Brooklyn Hair Cut," and (especially relevant in 1999) "Kosovo Barber House."

My research at such sites in Arusha explores the contemporary fluorescence of
popular culture as an array of practices through which Tanzanians establish their place
in an explicitly global and spectacular flow of images, objects, and persons.
In the modes of fantasy that constitute their popular culture, exemplified by such micro-institutions,
urban Tanzanians imaginatively articulate and act upon a world remade.

Thugz bust a move under the glare of BIG

I'm Brad Weiss, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the College of William & Mary. I have authored
several articles on Haya (Northwest Tanzania) culture, history, and society, as well as the book
The Making and Unmaking of the Haya Lived World: Consumption and Commoditization in Everyday Practice (Duke University Press).
My second book, Sacred Trees, Bitter Harvets:Globalizing Coffee in Colonial Northwest Tanganyika,
on the symbolic and material value of coffee in colonial Tanganyika is forthcoming with Heinemann;
and I am pursuing research in and around Arusha, when I have the chance. . .
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Click here to find out more about Arusha's rap scene

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Click here to find out more about Seif Bakari, proprietor of Nevada Art

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Mount Meru rises above Arusha
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In my real life, I spend much of my time with Ezra Weiss, and his mom, Julie Corsaro
comments?
send mail to blweis@wm.edu