Offering a series of ethnographic slices of life across time, Island in the Stream highlights community members' ethical engagement in their own history as they looked to the future, acknowledged the past, and engaged and transformed local forms of sociality, exchange, and ritual performance. This is a unique account of the changing horizons and historical consciousness of an African community and an intimate portrait of the inhabitants and their concerns, as well as a glimpse into the changing perspective of the ethnographer.
Michael Lambek is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He held a Canada Research Chair in the Anthropology of Ethical Life from 2006 to 2020 and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2000.
Michael D. Jackson is a New Zealand poet and anthropologist who has taught in anthropology departments at Massey University, the Australian National University, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of Copenhagen. He is a religion professor at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, USA.