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summary
Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa reveals the ways in which domestic space and domestic relationships take on different meanings in African contexts that extend the boundaries of family obligation, kinship, and dependency. The term domestic violence encompasses kin-based violence, marriage-based violence, gender-based violence, as well as violence between patrons and clients who shared the same domestic space. As a lived experience and as a social and historical unit of analysis, domestic violence in colonial and postcolonial Africa is complex. Using evidence drawn from Subsaharan Africa, the chapters explore the range of domestic violence in Africa’s colonial past and its present, including taxation and the insertion of the household into the broader structure of colonial domination. African histories of domestic violence demand that scholars and activists refine the terms and analyses and pay attention to the historical legacies of contemporary problems. This collection brings into conversation historical, anthropological, legal, and activist perspectives on domestic violence in Africa and fosters a deeper understanding of the problem of domestic violence, the limits of international human rights conventions, and local and regional efforts to address the issue.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
  2. pp. i-ii
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  1. Title Page/Copyright
  2. pp. iii-iv
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-vi
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  1. Preface
  2. pp. vii-x
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  1. Introduction: Domestic Violence and the Law in Africa
  2. pp. 1-29
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  1. Part I: Domestic Violence, Relationships of Servitude, and the Family
  2. pp. 31-32
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  1. 1. Domestic Violence, Colonial Courts, and the End of Slavery in French Soudan, 1905–12
  2. pp. 33-53
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  1. 2. Domestic Violence and Child Circulation in the Southeastern Gold Coast, 1905–28
  2. pp. 54-73
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  1. 3. Continuum of Gendered Violence The Colonial Invention of Female Desertion as a Customary Criminal Offense, French Soudan, 1900–1949
  2. pp. 74-93
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  1. 4. Violated Domesticity in Italian East Africa, 1937–40
  2. pp. 94-114
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  1. Part II: Narrating Domestic Violence
  2. pp. 115-116
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  1. 5. Sex, Violence, and Family in South Africa’s Eastern Cape
  2. pp. 117-137
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  1. 6. Child Marriage and Domestic Violence Islamic and Colonial Discourses on Gender Relations and Female Status in Zanzibar, 1900–1950s
  2. pp. 138-158
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  1. 7. Fatal Families Narratives of Spousal Killing and Domestic Violence in Murder Trials in Kenya and Nyasaland, c. 1930–56
  2. pp. 159-178
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  1. 8. Domestic Dramas and Occult Acts Witchcraft and Violence in the Arena of the Intimate
  2. pp. 179-200
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  1. Part III: Domestic Violence, Conjugal Relationships, and the Politics of the State in Postcolonial Africa
  2. pp. 201-202
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  1. 9. “I killed her because she disobeyed me in wearing this new hairstyle . . .” Gender-Based Violence, Laws, and Impunity in Senegal
  2. pp. 203-219
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  1. 10. The Logics of Controversy Gender Violence as a Site of Frictions in Ghanaian Advocacy
  2. pp. 220-238
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  1. 11. Constructing Law, Contesting Violence The Senegalese Family Code and Narratives of Domestic Abuse
  2. pp. 239-255
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  1. 12. Domestic Violence as a Human Rights Violation The Challenges of a Regional Human Rights Approach in Africa
  2. pp. 256-276
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  1. Afterword: Finding Gendered Justice in the Age of Human Rights
  2. pp. 277-286
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  1. Selected Bibliography
  2. pp. 287-294
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 295-297
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 299-303
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