Synopses & Reviews
Ten contributions from an international group of anthropologists introduce recent gender theory to the analysis of African ethnography. A range of case studies encompassing hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, and pastoralists apply new theoretical approaches to gender ideology as it relates to cosmological thinking, concepts of fertility, and other topics. An important theme running through the articles is the attempt to overcome or properly modify sociologist Emile Durkheim's belief that all categories of thought are socially derived.
Synopsis
Explores the ways in which gender categories permeate African systems of thought and ritual practices.
Table of Contents
Gender, symbolism and praxis: theoretical approaches / Henrietta L. Moore -- 'Doing gender' in Africa: embodying categories and the categorically disembodied / Todd Sanders -- The lion at the waterhole: the secrets of life and death in Chewa Rites de passage / Deboarah Kaspin -- First gender, wrong sex / Camilla Power and Ian Watts -- Saisee Tororeita: an analysis of complementarity in Akie gender ideology / Bwire Kaare -- Creation and the multiple female body: Turkana perspectives on gender and cosmos / Vigdis Broch-Due -- 'Dealing with men's spears': Datooga pastoralists combating male intrusion on female fertility / Astrid Blystad -- Gender ideology, and the domestic and public domains among the Iraqw / Katherine A. Snyder -- Women's work is weeping: constructions of gender in a Catholic community / Maia Green -- Chaos and creativity: the transformative symbolism of fused categories / Anita Jacobson-Widding.