Synopses & Reviews
This long awaited and definitive work on gender in Asante during the early twentieth century provides a needed balance to emphasis on chiefship and external relations evident thus far in the historical scholarship on colonial and pre-colonial Asante. I am certainly looking forward to using this book in every possible African studies course I teach. - Gracia Clark, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University
By bringing women into the mainstream of Asante historiography, the authors move us towards that singularly elusive goal: the realization of a comprehensive Asante social history.
- Ivor Wilks Professor Emeritus, African History Northwestern University
In an admirable collaborative effort, Jean Allman and Victoria Tashjian focus on commodity production, family labor and reproduction in colonial Asante. The authors demonstrate how broader social and economic forces - cash cropping, trade, monetization of the economy, British rule, and Christian missions - recast the terms of domestic struggle in Asante and how ordinary men and women negotiated that ever shifting landscape. By centering their analysis on women, Allman and Tashjian recover the broader history of a society whose past has largely been understood in terms of the state, political evolution, trade, and the careers of political elites. Based on the recollections of Asante women and men born during the years 1900 to 1925 and on rich archival sources, I Will Not Eat Stone captures the resilience and tenacity of a generation of Asante women and their struggles in defense of social and economic autonomy.
Review
This long awaited and definitive work on gender in Asante during the early twentieth century provides a needed balance to emphasis on chiefship and external relations evident thus far in the historical scholarship on colonial and pre-colonial Asante. I am certainly looking forward to using this book in every possible African studies course I teach.Gracia Clark Department of Anthropology Indiana University
Review
I Will Not Eat Stone opens up a new and highly exciting field in Ghana Studies. In this meticulously researched study, Allman and Tashjian illuminate the ways in which women adapted, as producers and reproducers, to the accelerating incorporation of colonial Asante into world markets. By bringing women into the mainstream of Asante historiography, the authors move us towards that singularly elusive goal: the realization of a comprehensive Asante social history.Ivor Wilks Professor Emeritus, African History Northwestern University
Review
This study of matrilineal Asante society provides a fascinating counterpoint to the much more prevalent scholarship on African women in patrilineal societies. Allman and Tashjian show how, as the colonial economic and political systems increasingly favored male interests, Asante women struggled to defend their economic rights (and) regain control over the products of their labor and their personal lives.Elizabeth Schmidt Department of History Loyola CollegeThis long awaited and definitive work on gender in Asante during the early twentieth century provides a needed balance to emphasis on chiefship and external relations evident thus far in the historical scholarship on colonial and pre-colonial Asante. I am certainly looking forward to using this book in every possible African studies course I teach.Gracia Clark Department of Anthropology Indiana UniversityI Will Not Eat Stone opens up a new and highly exciting field in Ghana Studies. In this meticulously researched study, Allman and Tashjian illuminate the ways in which women adapted, as producers and reproducers, to the accelerating incorporation of colonial Asante into world markets. By bringing women into the mainstream of Asante historiography, the authors move us towards that singularly elusive goal: the realization of a comprehensive Asante social history.Ivor Wilks Professor Emeritus, African History Northwestern University
Synopsis
I Will Not Eat Stone captures the resilience and tenacity of a generation of Asante women and their struggles in defense of social and economic autonomy.
Synopsis
This long awaited and definitive work on gender in Asante during the early twentieth century provides a needed balance to emphasis on chiefship and external relations evident thus far in the historical scholarship on colonial and pre-colonial Asante. I am certainly looking forward to using this book in every possible African studies course I teach. - Gracia Clark, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University
By bringing women into the mainstream of Asante historiography, the authors move us towards that singularly elusive goal: the realization of a comprehensive Asante social history.
- Ivor Wilks Professor Emeritus, African History Northwestern University
In an admirable collaborative effort, Jean Allman and Victoria Tashjian focus on commodity production, family labor and reproduction in colonial Asante. The authors demonstrate how broader social and economic forces - cash cropping, trade, monetization of the economy, British rule, and Christian missions - recast the terms of domestic struggle in Asante and how ordinary men and women negotiated that ever shifting landscape. By centering their analysis on women, Allman and Tashjian recover the broader history of a society whose past has largely been understood in terms of the state, political evolution, trade, and the careers of political elites. Based on the recollections of Asante women and men born during the years 1900 to 1925 and on rich archival sources, I Will Not Eat Stone captures the resilience and tenacity of a generation of Asante women and their struggles in defense of social and economic autonomy.
About the Author
Victoria Tashjian is an Assistant Professor in the History in the Department at St. Norbert College.Jean Allman is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Minnesota.
Table of Contents
Glossary of Twi terms
By Way of Introduction
The World to Which They Were Born: Women's Life Stories and the Problem of Colonial Chronologies
"It's Mine" and "It's Ours" Are Not the Same Thing: Marrying and Marriage on a Shifting Colonial Terrain
Sika Ye Mogya/"Money is Blood"?: Transformations in the Domestic Economy of Childrearing
"Serving a Man Is Wasted Labor": Women's Conjugal Strategies in a Worold of Cash and Cocoa
Making Proper Mothers and Dutiful Wives: Chiefs, Missions, and Order out of Chaos
By Way of Concluding
Bibliography
Index