Gossip, Markets, and Gender: How Dialogue Constructs Moral Value in Post-Socialist Kilimanjaro
by Tuulikki Pietila
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 Paper: 978-0-299-22094-5 | eISBN: 978-0-299-22093-8 | Cloth: 978-0-299-22090-7 Library of Congress Classification HF5475.T362K556 2007 Dewey Decimal Classification 306.340967826
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
"All traders are thieves, especially women traders," people often assured social anthropologist Tuulikki Pietilä during her field work in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, in the mid-1990s. Equally common were stories about businessmen who had "bought a spirit" for their enrichment. Pietilä places these and similar comments in the context of the liberalization of the Tanzanian economy that began in the 1980s, when many men and women found themselves newly enmeshed in the burgeoning market economy. Even as emerging private markets strengthened the position of enterprising people, economic resources did not automatically lead to heightened social position. Instead, social recognition remained tied to a complex cultural negotiation through stories and gossip in markets, bars, and neighborhoods.
With its rich ethnographic detail, Gossip, Markets, and Gender shows how gossip and the responses to it form an ongoing dialogue through which the moral reputations of trading women and businessmen, and cultural ideas about moral value and gender, are constructed and rethought. By combining a sociolinguistic study of talk, storytelling, and conversation with analysis of gender, the political economy of trading, and the moral economy of personhood, Pietilä reveals a new perspective on the globalization of the market economy and its meaning and impact on the local level.
Winner, Aidoo-Snyder Prize, African Studies Association Women’s Caucus
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Tuulikki Pietilä is lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Helsinki. She is the author of numerous articles and essays on trade and gender issues in postcolonial Africa
REVIEWS
"Explores important political and economic implications of gossip and markets. It will be very valuable to those interested in African gender and economies."—Gracia Clark, Indiana University, Bloomington
"A strong, theoretically informed ethnography, Gossip, Markets, and Gender successfully reveals the force of persuasive rhetoric and casual talk in a changing moral economy. At the heart of the matter is a moral dialogue about upward mobility, reputation, and value in the context of postsocialist liberalization and new attitudes toward making money."—Richard Werbner, University of Manchester
“Nuanced, accessible, and engaging. . . . Pietilä does a masterful job of grounding her analysis in the everyday lives and experiences of Chagga men and women.”—Dorothy L. Hodgson, Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society
TABLE OF CONTENTS
<new recto>
Contents
List of Illustrations 000
Acknowledgments 000
Introduction 3
Part 1. Women
1. Domesticating the Market, Marketing the Domestic 000
2. Feeding, Drinking, and Eating: Market Women Restructuring Gender 000
3. Constructing Moral Reputation: The Case of Mama Njau 000
4. From Captured Wives to Bound Men: Rethinking Female Respect
Part 2. Men
5. The Presence of Urban Men in Their Home Lineage 000
6. Making Sense of Failure: Stories of Businessmen and Wealth 000
Conclusion 000
Notes 000
Bibliography 000
Index 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Gossip, Markets, and Gender: How Dialogue Constructs Moral Value in Post-Socialist Kilimanjaro
by Tuulikki Pietila
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 Paper: 978-0-299-22094-5 eISBN: 978-0-299-22093-8 Cloth: 978-0-299-22090-7
"All traders are thieves, especially women traders," people often assured social anthropologist Tuulikki Pietilä during her field work in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, in the mid-1990s. Equally common were stories about businessmen who had "bought a spirit" for their enrichment. Pietilä places these and similar comments in the context of the liberalization of the Tanzanian economy that began in the 1980s, when many men and women found themselves newly enmeshed in the burgeoning market economy. Even as emerging private markets strengthened the position of enterprising people, economic resources did not automatically lead to heightened social position. Instead, social recognition remained tied to a complex cultural negotiation through stories and gossip in markets, bars, and neighborhoods.
With its rich ethnographic detail, Gossip, Markets, and Gender shows how gossip and the responses to it form an ongoing dialogue through which the moral reputations of trading women and businessmen, and cultural ideas about moral value and gender, are constructed and rethought. By combining a sociolinguistic study of talk, storytelling, and conversation with analysis of gender, the political economy of trading, and the moral economy of personhood, Pietilä reveals a new perspective on the globalization of the market economy and its meaning and impact on the local level.
Winner, Aidoo-Snyder Prize, African Studies Association Women’s Caucus
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Tuulikki Pietilä is lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Helsinki. She is the author of numerous articles and essays on trade and gender issues in postcolonial Africa
REVIEWS
"Explores important political and economic implications of gossip and markets. It will be very valuable to those interested in African gender and economies."—Gracia Clark, Indiana University, Bloomington
"A strong, theoretically informed ethnography, Gossip, Markets, and Gender successfully reveals the force of persuasive rhetoric and casual talk in a changing moral economy. At the heart of the matter is a moral dialogue about upward mobility, reputation, and value in the context of postsocialist liberalization and new attitudes toward making money."—Richard Werbner, University of Manchester
“Nuanced, accessible, and engaging. . . . Pietilä does a masterful job of grounding her analysis in the everyday lives and experiences of Chagga men and women.”—Dorothy L. Hodgson, Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society
TABLE OF CONTENTS
<new recto>
Contents
List of Illustrations 000
Acknowledgments 000
Introduction 3
Part 1. Women
1. Domesticating the Market, Marketing the Domestic 000
2. Feeding, Drinking, and Eating: Market Women Restructuring Gender 000
3. Constructing Moral Reputation: The Case of Mama Njau 000
4. From Captured Wives to Bound Men: Rethinking Female Respect
Part 2. Men
5. The Presence of Urban Men in Their Home Lineage 000
6. Making Sense of Failure: Stories of Businessmen and Wealth 000
Conclusion 000
Notes 000
Bibliography 000
Index 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE