Gendered encounters : challenging cultural boundaries and social hierarchies in Africa

This book makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates on "globalization," culture and gender. Focusing on intersections of the local and the global in Africa, contributors elucidate how translocal and transnational cultural currents are mediated by gender, how they reshape gender constructs and relations, and how they both manifest and impinge on relations of power. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 Acknowledgments 9 Contributors 10 Introduction 12 Part One Women Negotiating Boundaries 34 Sandra E. Greene Crossing Boundaries/Changing Identities: Female Slaves, Male Strangers, and Their Descendants in Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Anlo 34 Obiagele Lake Diaspora African Repatriation: The Place of Diaspora Women in the Pan-African Nexus 54 Ch. Didier Gondola Popular Music, Urban Society, and Changing Gender Relations in Kinshasa, Zaire (1950-1990) 76 Part Two Gender and the Mediation of Modernity 96 Barbara A. Moss "To Determine the Scale of Wants of the community": Gender and African Consumption 96 Dorothy Hodgson Embodying the Contradictions of Modernity: Gender and Spirit Possession among Maasai in Tanzania 122 Victoria Bernal Islam, Transnational Culture, and Modernity in Rural Sudan 142 Part Three Engendering Cultural Flows 164 Gillian Feeley-Harnik Dying Gods and Queen Mothers: The International Politics of Social Reproduction in Africa and Europe 164 Judy Rosenthal Foreign Tongues and Domestic Bodies: Gendered Cultural Regions and Regionalized Sacred Flows 194 Helen Nabasuta Mugambi From Story to Song: Gender, Nationhood, and the Migratory Text 216 Paulla Ebron Traffic in Men 234 Postlude 256 Index 260 Challenging Cultural Boundaries and Social Hierarchies in Africa Gendered Encounters is an important contribution to contemporary debates on globalization, culture, and gender in Africa. Noted scholars from anthropology, history, comparative literature, and political science demonstrate that gender has to be an integral part of any attempt to understand local/global intersections. Through analyses of specific social and cultural phenomena, the contributors show how translocal and transnational cultural currents are mediated by gender, how they reshape gender constructions and relations, and how they both manifest and impinge on relations of power. Gendered Encounters makes it clear that change has been as significant as continuity in the making of culture, and that cultural creativity in Africa both antedates and continues alongside late twentieth-century technological developments. This volume will appeal to scholars and students of Africa as well as to specialists in anthropology, gender studies, history, and cultural studies. Crossing Boundaries/changing Identities / Sandra E. Greene -- Disapora African Repatriation / Obiagele Lake -- Popular Music, Urban Society And Changing Gender Relations In Kinshasa, Zaire (1950-1990) / Ch. Didier Gondola -- To Determine The Scale Of Wants Of The Community / Barbara A. Moss -- Embodying The Contradictions Of Modernity / Dorothy Hodgson -- Islam, Transnational Culture And Modernity In Rural Sudan / Victoria Bernal -- Dying Gods And Queen Mothers / Gillian Feeley-harnik -- Foreign Tongues And Domestic Bodies / Judy Rosenthal -- From Story To Song / Helen Nabasuta Mugumbi -- Traffic In Men / Paulla Ebron. Maria Grosz-ngaté And Omari H. Kokole, Editors. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Contributes to the deabates on "globalization", culture and gender. The text focuses on intersections of the local and the global through the prism of gender, elucidating how translocal and transnational cultural currents are mediated by gender and how they reshape gender constructs. In the last twenty years, scholars interested in the social history of precolonial Africa have generated an impressive body of studies on gender relations in various parts of the continent.