In this Book

summary
Do African men and women think about and act out their ethnicity in different ways? Most studies of ethnicity in Africa consider men’s experiences, but rarely have scholars examined whether women have the same idea of what it means to be, for example, Igbo or Tswana or Kikuyu. Or, studies have invoked the adage “women have no tribe” to indicate a woman’s loss of ethnicity as she marries into her husband’s community. This volume engages directly the issue of women’s ethnicity and makes stimulating contributions to debates about how and why women’s movements have a unifying role in African political organization and peace movements.
            Drawing on extensive field research in many different regions of Africa, the contributors demonstrate in their essays that women do make choices about the forms of ethnicity they embrace, creating alternatives to male-centered definitions—in some cases rejecting a specific ethnic identity in favor of an interethnic alliance, in others reinterpreting the meaning of ethnicity within gendered domains, and in others performing ethnic power in gendered ways. Their analysis helps explain why African women may be more likely to champion interethnic political movements while men often promote an ethnicity based on martial masculinity. Bringing together anthropologists, historians, linguists, and political scientists, Gendering Ethnicity in African Women’s Lives offers a diverse and timely look at a neglected but important topic.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Title Page, Copyright
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-viii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. ix-2
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction: Women’s Alternative Practices of Ethnicity in Africa
  2. Jan Bender Shetler
  3. pp. 3-28
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part I. Forming Interethnic Alliances
  1. 1. Gendering the History of Social Memory in the Mara Region, Tanzania, as an Antidote to “Tribal” History
  2. Jan Bender Shetler
  3. pp. 31-56
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 2. Living Ethnicity: Gender, Livelihood, and Ethnic Identity in Mozambique
  2. Heidi Gengenbach
  3. pp. 57-84
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part II. Constructing New Forms of Identity
  1. 3. Re-reading the 1835 “Fingo Emancipation”: Women and Ethnicity in the Colonial Archive
  2. Poppy Fry
  3. pp. 87-99
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 4. New African Marriage and Panethnic Politics in Segregationist South Africa
  2. Meghan Healy-Clancy
  3. pp. 100-122
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 5. Women and Non-ethnic Politics in East Africa, 1934–1947
  2. Ethan R. Sanders
  3. pp. 123-150
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part III. Promoting Gendered Domains of Ethnicity
  1. 6. Gender and the Limits of “Ndebeleness,” 1910–1960s: Abezansi Churchwomen’s Domestic and Associational Alliances
  2. Wendy Urban-Mead
  3. pp. 153-177
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 7. “Women Were Not Supposed to Fight”: The Gendered Uses of Martial and Moral Zuluness during uDlame, 1990–1994
  2. Jill E. Kelly
  3. pp. 178-205
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 8. Sorting and Suffering: Social Classification in Postgenocide Rwanda
  2. Jennie E. Burnet
  3. pp. 206-230
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part IV. Performing Gendered Ethnic Power
  1. 9. Matriliny, Masculinity, and Contested Gendered Definitions of Ethnic Identity and Power in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Nigeria
  2. Ndubueze L. Mbah
  3. pp. 233-264
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 10. Shaming Men, Performing Power: Female Authority in Zimbabwe and Tanzania on the Eve of Colonial Rule
  2. Heike I. Schmidt
  3. pp. 265-289
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 11. Muslim Women Legislators in Postcolonial Kenya: Between Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion
  2. Ousseina D. Alidou
  3. pp. 290-308
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Afterword: Reflections on Gender, Ethnicity, and Power
  2. Dorothy L. Hodgson
  3. pp. 309-314
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Suggestions for Further Reading
  2. pp. 315-322
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 323-326
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 327-336
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Other Works in the Series
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.