I Will Not Eat Stone: A Women's History of Colonial Asante (Social History of Africa) - Softcover

Tashjian, Victoria B; Allman, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0325070008 ISBN 13: 9780325070001

Publisher: Heinemann, 2000

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 this title

About the Author

JEAN ALLMAN is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Minnesota.VICTORIA TASHJIAN is an Assistant Professor in the History in the Department at St. Norbert College.

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 College "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 "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 "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 College

About this edition

• Publisher: Heinemann
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0325070008
• ISBN 13: 9780325070001
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 312