University of Wisconsin Press, 2015 Paper: 978-0-299-30394-5 | eISBN: 978-0-299-30393-8 Library of Congress Classification HQ1787.G457 2015 Dewey Decimal Classification 305.40967
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Jan Bender Shetler is a professor of history at Goshen College. She is the author of Imagining Serengeti and Telling Our Own Stories: Local Histories from South Mara, Tanzania.
REVIEWS
“An important, original, and timely anthology bringing a feminist scholarly perspective to the workings of ethnicity and women’s lives in Africa.”—Victoria Bernal, University of California, Irvine
“This volume fills a long-overdue need for a book-length treatment of the nexus of gender and ethnicity.”—Monica Udvardy, University of Kentucky
“For the historian, these musings on sources, memory, and historiographic silences provide a highly stimulating invitation to rethink our approach to the history of identity in Africa. A very fine historically nuanced collection.”—Barbara M. Cooper, Rutgers University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Women’s Alternative Practices of Ethnicity in Africa
Jan Bender Shetler
Part I
Forming Interethnic Alliances
1 Gendering the History of Social Memory in the Mara Region, Tanzania, as an Antidote to “Tribal” History
Jan Bender Shetler
2 Living Ethnicity: Gender, Livelihood, and Ethnic Identity in Mozambique
Heidi Gengenbach
Part II
Constructing New Forms of Identity
3 Re-reading the 1835 “Fingo Emancipation”: Women and Ethnicity in the Colonial Archive
Poppy Fry
4 New African Marriage and Panethnic Politics in Segregationist South Africa
Meghan Healy-Clancy
5 Women and Non-ethnic Politics in East Africa, 1934–1947
Ethan R. Sanders
Part III
Promoting Gendered Domains of Ethnicity
6 Gender and the Limits of “Ndebeleness,” 1910–1960s: Abezansi Churchwomen’s Domestic and Associational Alliances
Wendy Urban-Mead
7 “Women Were Not Supposed to Fight”: The Gendered Uses of Martial and Moral Zuluness during uDlame, 1990–1994
Jill E. Kelly
8 Sorting and Suffering: Social Classification in Postgenocide Rwanda
Jennie E. Burnet
Part IV
Performing Gendered Ethnic Power
9 Matriliny, Masculinity, and Contested Gendered Definitions of Ethnic Identity and Power in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Nigeria
Ndubueze L. Mbah
10 Shaming Men, Performing Power: Female Authority in Zimbabwe and Tanzania on the Eve of Colonial Rule
Heike I. Schmidt
11 Muslim Women Legislators in Postcolonial Kenya:
Between Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion
Ousseina D. Alidou
Afterword: Reflections on Gender, Ethnicity, and
Power
Dorothy L. Hodgson
Suggestions for Further Reading
Contributors
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
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Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Wisconsin Press, 2015 Paper: 978-0-299-30394-5 eISBN: 978-0-299-30393-8
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Jan Bender Shetler is a professor of history at Goshen College. She is the author of Imagining Serengeti and Telling Our Own Stories: Local Histories from South Mara, Tanzania.
REVIEWS
“An important, original, and timely anthology bringing a feminist scholarly perspective to the workings of ethnicity and women’s lives in Africa.”—Victoria Bernal, University of California, Irvine
“This volume fills a long-overdue need for a book-length treatment of the nexus of gender and ethnicity.”—Monica Udvardy, University of Kentucky
“For the historian, these musings on sources, memory, and historiographic silences provide a highly stimulating invitation to rethink our approach to the history of identity in Africa. A very fine historically nuanced collection.”—Barbara M. Cooper, Rutgers University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Women’s Alternative Practices of Ethnicity in Africa
Jan Bender Shetler
Part I
Forming Interethnic Alliances
1 Gendering the History of Social Memory in the Mara Region, Tanzania, as an Antidote to “Tribal” History
Jan Bender Shetler
2 Living Ethnicity: Gender, Livelihood, and Ethnic Identity in Mozambique
Heidi Gengenbach
Part II
Constructing New Forms of Identity
3 Re-reading the 1835 “Fingo Emancipation”: Women and Ethnicity in the Colonial Archive
Poppy Fry
4 New African Marriage and Panethnic Politics in Segregationist South Africa
Meghan Healy-Clancy
5 Women and Non-ethnic Politics in East Africa, 1934–1947
Ethan R. Sanders
Part III
Promoting Gendered Domains of Ethnicity
6 Gender and the Limits of “Ndebeleness,” 1910–1960s: Abezansi Churchwomen’s Domestic and Associational Alliances
Wendy Urban-Mead
7 “Women Were Not Supposed to Fight”: The Gendered Uses of Martial and Moral Zuluness during uDlame, 1990–1994
Jill E. Kelly
8 Sorting and Suffering: Social Classification in Postgenocide Rwanda
Jennie E. Burnet
Part IV
Performing Gendered Ethnic Power
9 Matriliny, Masculinity, and Contested Gendered Definitions of Ethnic Identity and Power in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Nigeria
Ndubueze L. Mbah
10 Shaming Men, Performing Power: Female Authority in Zimbabwe and Tanzania on the Eve of Colonial Rule
Heike I. Schmidt
11 Muslim Women Legislators in Postcolonial Kenya:
Between Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion
Ousseina D. Alidou
Afterword: Reflections on Gender, Ethnicity, and
Power
Dorothy L. Hodgson
Suggestions for Further Reading
Contributors
Index
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