Gender Epistemologies in Africa : Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions, and Identities

This volume brings together a variety of studies that are engaged with notions of gender in different African localities, institutions and historical time periods. The objective is to expand empirical and theoretical studies that take seriously the idea that in order to understand gender and gender relations in Africa, we must start with Africa. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-7 Decolonizing the Intellectual and the Quotidian: Yorùbá Scholars(hip) and Male Dominance....Pages 9-33 Gender in Translation: Ẹfúnṣetán Aníwúr`....Pages 35-62 Ode to Patriarchy: The Fine Line between Praise and Criticism in a Popular Senegalese Poem....Pages 63-83 Women and Leadership in Nigerian Islam: The Experience of Alhaja Sheidat Mujidat Adéoyè of Òṣogbo....Pages 85-99 Engendering Critical Spatial Literacy: Migrant Asante Women and the Politics of Urban Space....Pages 101-118 Outsiders Within: Experiences of Women Academics in Kenya....Pages 119-154 Self-Image and Self-Naming: A Discursive and Social Analysis of Women’s Microenterprises in Senegal and Mali....Pages 155-178 Irua Ria Atumia and Anticolonial Struggles among the Gĩkũyũ of Kenya: A Counternarrative on “Female Genital Mutilation”....Pages 179-197 NAKABUMBA: God Creates Humanity as a Potter Creates a Pot....Pages 199-222 Beyond Gendercentric Models: Restoring Motherhood to Yorùbá Discourses of Art and Aesthetics....Pages 223-238 Back Matter....Pages 239-244 This book brings together a variety of studies that are engaged with notions of gender in different African localities, institutions and historical time periods. The objective is to expand empirical and theoretical studies that take seriously the idea that in order to understand gender and gender relations in Africa, we must start with Africa. If gender emerges out of particular histories and social contexts, we must therefore pay attention to the histories of genderings as well as the continuous ways in which gender is made and remade in everyday interactions, and by institutions. In this sense then, "gender" is actually more about gendering - a process - rather than something inherent in social relations