Wicked Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa
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Collection of detailed case studies demonstrates the centrality of women and Booknews Mostly from the US, but also Africa, Canada, and Britain, historians, anthropologists, and scholars of women's studies and Africa analyze how ideas and actions of African women whose behavior does not meet expectations are pivotal in transforming gender relations and other domains of social life. Such women are accused of adultery, prostitution, abandonment, insubordination, and sometimes even self- sufficiency. The 15 essays cover contesting conjugality, confronting authority, taking and making spaces, and negotiating difference. Most of them describe former British colonies. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
IllustrationsPreface1Introduction: "Wicked" Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa12Women, Marriage, Divorce and the Emerging Colonial State in Abeokuta (Nigeria) 1892-1904273"She Thinks She's Like a Man": Marriage and (De)constructing Gender Identity in Colonial Buha, Western Tanzania, 1943-1960474Wayward Women and Useless Men: Contest and Change in Gender Relations in Ado-Odo, S. W. Nigeria675"Gone to Their Second Husbands": Marital Metaphors and Conjugal Contracts in The Gambia's Female Garden Sector856Dancing Women and Colonial Men: The Nwaobiala of 19251097Rounding Up Spinsters: Gender Chaos and Unmarried Women in Colonial Asante1308"My Daughter ... Belongs to the Government Now": Marriage, Maasai, and the Tanzanian State1499Gender and the Cultural Construction of "Bad Women" in the Development of Kampala-Kibuga, 1900-196217110You Have Left Me Wandering About: Basotho Women and the Culture of Mobility18811Urban Threats: Manyema Women, Low Fertility, and Venereal Diseases in Tanganyika, 1926-193621212Negotiating Social Independence: the Challenges of Career Pursuits for Igbo Women in Postcolonial Nigeria23413The Politics of Difference and Women's Associations in Niger: of "Prostitutes," the Public, and Politics25514"Wicked Women" and "Respectable Ladies": Reconfiguring Gender on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1936-196427415Gender and Profiteering: Ghana's Market Women as Devoted Mothers and "Human Vampire Bats"293Index313About the Contributors323
