"Wicked" Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa - Softcover

3.6

10 ratings by Goodreads

9780325070049: "Wicked" Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0325070040 ISBN 13: 9780325070049

Publisher: Heinemann, 2001

This edited collection of 17 essays examines the many ways African women pushed the borders individually and collectively, of "acceptable" behavior to produce changes in the gendered dynamics of power and a reconfiguration of broader moral and social orders. The book bridges the gap between studies of women and studies of gender by demonstrating how gender relations are produced, reproduced, and transformed through the everyday ideas and agency of women and men interacting with local and translocal structures and processes. With rich attention to the interplay between agency, power, and structure, this superb collection challenges common stereotypes of African women as either victims or unrestrained resisters.

Hodgson and McCurdy have assembled an impressive and multidisciplinary group of contributors. Some are senior scholars who have published widely in social history. Others are junior or mid-ranking scholars who already have substantial and have publications in the leading journals in their fields. The editors themselves provide a superb introduction that unifies the collection and offers novel theoretical and methodological insights into the study of women in Africa. This is a long overdue anthology that should become a required text every course that explores the experiences of African women and in every African Studies and African history course that takes gender seriously.

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About the Author:

DOROTHY L. HODGSON is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University.SHERYL A. MCCURDY is a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research in the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health.

Review:

Hodgson and McCurdy have assembled a lively, original collection of essays that together explore the ways in which gender roles and relationships were produced and transformed through the daily interactions of women and men during Africa's long twentieth century ... builds on and enriches a growing literature on women's history and gender relations, which is remaking our understanding of African social history in general. - Sara Berry, Professor of History & Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University ... a powerful, historically contextualised and socially relevant collection. It adds to a growing literature on African women that makes visible women's power, voice, action - and women's involvement in making and revising key areas of African history. - Kammila Naidoo in MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES

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