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recto runninghead ix a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s I would like to acknowledge my host family in Senegal for their unending generosity and patience. I would also like to thank the women’s association in Khar Yalla for teaching me about women’s lives in Senegal. To protect their privacy, I have changed people’s names in the text, though they did not ask me to. Unfortunately, that prevents me from naming them here, but I hope that they will accept my gratitude. Without them, there would not be a book. Several foundations and institutions supported this work at various stages. I thank the government of Senegal for granting me permission to conduct research there. I thank Dr. Moussa Seck at ENDA SYSPRO for introducing me to the neighborhood of Grand Yoff and facilitating my studying there in 1992, and Emanuel Seyni Ndione for allowing me to work at CHODAK. I would like to acknowledge the Wenner-Gren Foundation for its support of my fieldwork in Senegal in 1999–2000; the West African Research Center and IFAN in Dakar, especially Dr. Khadim Mbacke for his invaluable assistance and Dr. Bachir Diagne for arranging research clearance; the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago for support of my dissertation writing; the National Endowment for the Humanities for a summer stipend to conduct research in New York City; and the College Arts and Humanities Institute at Indiana University, Bloomington, for a one-semester teaching release to complete the manuscript. Thepeoplewhohaveinfluencedmearetoonumeroustolist,butIwant to thank those who provided me with invaluable insight, expertise, and conversation in and about Senegal: Dior Konate, Ibrahima Sene, Cheikh Anta Babou Mbacke, Cheikh Gueye, and Mansour Tall. During my fieldwork in 1999–2000, I was also grateful for the friendship and camaraderie of Erin Augis, Tim Mangin, Brett O’Bannon, and Suzanne Scheld. My thinking about the manuscript was deepened by discussions with colleagues and students at the University of Chicago (especially the African Studies Workshop: Misty Bastian, Rob Blunt, Anne-Maria Makhulu, Adeline Masquelier, Jesse Shipley, James Smith, Brad Weiss, and Hylton x verso runninghead White), the University of Rochester, and Indiana University. I am especially grateful to my academic advisors, including the undergraduate professors who introduced me to anthropology and to West Africa, Gracia Clark and Maria Grosz Ngate; to Andrew Apter, Ralph Austen, and Jean and John Comaroff at the University of Chicago; and to John Hunwick at Northwestern University. I thank Katherine Buggenhagen, Dior Konate, and Ellen Sieber for deepening my knowledge of textiles and weaving. I thank Nicole Castor, Emily McEwan Fujita, and Rachel Reynolds for their insight and careful reading of this project at various stages. I also thank Stephen Jackson and Dorothea Schultz. I am grateful to my husband , family, and friends, who endured multiple fieldwork trips and the long process of writing and revising and only occasionally and with the best of intentions asked when I would finish the book. I would like to recognize the careful work of my research assistant, Katherine Wiley, a doctoral candidate at Indiana University. I am especially grateful for the comments of the anonymous reviewers and the assistance of Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press. I have dedicated this book to my daughters, Evelyn and Ada, and I am also grateful to the smart and loving women who cared for them while I worked. x acknowledgments ...

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