Swahili women since the nineteenth century: Theoretical and empirical considerations on gender and identity construction

Africa Today

Volumn 43, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 251-268

  Gower, Rebecca ^a   Salm, Steven ^a   Falola, Toyin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AFRICA; AFRICA SOUTH OF THE SAHARA; ARTICLE; BEHAVIOR; DEMOGRAPHY; DEVELOPING COUNTRY; EASTERN AFRICA; ECONOMIC FACTORS; ECONOMICS; FEMALE ROLE; FEMINISM; GENDER ISSUES; GENDER RELATIONS; HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY; HUMAN RELATION; LITERATURE REVIEW; POLITICAL SYSTEM; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIOECONOMICS; SOCIOLOGY; THEORETICAL MODEL; THEORETICAL STUDIES; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WOMEN'S STATUS;

AFRICA; AFRICA SOUTH OF THE SAHARA; BEHAVIOR; COLONIALISM; DEMOGRAPHY; DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; EASTERN AFRICA; ECONOMIC FACTORS; FEMALE ROLE; FEMINISM; GENDER ISSUES; GENDER RELATIONS; HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY; LITERATURE REVIEW; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL SCIENCES; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; THEORETICAL STUDIES; WOMEN'S STATUS;

AFRICA; AFRICA SOUTH OF THE SAHARA; AFRICA, EASTERN; BEHAVIOR; COLONIALISM; DEMOGRAPHY; DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; ECONOMICS; FEMINISM; INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS; MODELS, THEORETICAL; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL SCIENCES; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

EID: 0030300227     PISSN: 00019887     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 6.
2. Jane Flax, "Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory," Signs, vol. 12, no. 4 (1987). p. 629.
3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by G. Bennington and B. Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
4. Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 5, nos. 2-3 (1988), pp. 373-394. Reprinted in Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
5. Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 5, nos. 2-3 (1988), pp. 373-394. Reprinted in Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
6. Fraser and Nicholson, "Social Criticism Without Philosophy," reprinted in Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), p. 429.
7. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 106.
8. Flax, "Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory," p. 630.
9. Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, p. 4.
10. Ibid., p. 31.
11. Margaret Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890-1975 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 4.
12. Mwana Kupona, "Mwana Kupona's Poem," in Ali A. Jahadhmy, ed., Anthology of Swahili Poetry (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1975). p. 31.
13. Arvède Barine, Princesses and Court Ladies (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1906), p. 153.
14. Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, p. 54.
15. Marc J. Swartz, "The Isolation of Men and the Happiness of Women: Sources and Use of Power in Swahili Marital Relationships," Journal of Anthropological Relationship, vol. 38, no. 1 (1983), p. 27.
16. E. D. Hecht, "Harar and Lamu: A Comparison of Two East African Muslim Societies," TransAfrican Journal of History, vol. 16 (1987), p. 10.
17. Carol M. Eastman, "Women, Slaves, and Foreigners: African Cultural Influences and Group Processes in the Formation of Northern Swahili Coastal Society," International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 21 (1988), p. 1.
18. Ibid., p. 2.
19. Edward A. Alpers, "Ordinary Household Chores: Ritual and Power in a Nineteenth Century Swahili Women's Possession Cult," International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 17, no. 4 (1984), pp. 677-702.
20. Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, p. 80.
21. Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977).
22. Alpers, "Ordinary Household Chores," p. 690.
23. Barine, Princesses and Court Ladies, p. 170.
24. Carol M. Eastman, "Wa-ungwana wa Wanawake: Muslim Ethnicity and Sexual Segregation in Coastal Kenya," Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 5 (1984), p. 100.
25. James de Vere Allen, ed. "The Customs of the Swahili People" (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981), p. 228.
26. Iris Berger, "Rebels or Status Seeker? Women as Spirit Mediums in East Africa," in Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay, eds., Women in Africa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).
27. Marja-Liisa Swantz, Ritual and Symbol in Transitional Zaramo Society (Uppsala; Stockholm: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1986), p. 219.
28. Linda L. Giles, "Possession Cults on the Swahili Coast: A Re-examination of Theories of Marginality," Africa, vol. 57, no. 2 (1987), p. 244.
29. Ibid., p. 246.
30. I. M. Lewis, Islam in Tropical Africa, 2d ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980). p. 60.
31. Linda L. Giles, "Spirit Possession on the Swahili Coast: Peripheral Cults or Primary Texts," dissertation, the University of Texas at Austin, December 1989, p. 63.
32. J. Spenser Trimingham, Islam in East Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 66.
33. Giles, "Spirit Possession on the Swahili Coast," p. 67.
34. Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, p. 78.
35. Iris Berger, "Rebel or Status Seeker?" p. 228.
36. Giles, "Possession Cults on the Swahili Coast," p. 247.
37. Berger, "Rebel or Status Seeker?" p. 228.
38. Alpers, "Ordinary Household Chores," p. 700.
39. Eastman, "Women, Slaves, and Foreigners," p. 1.
40. Ibid.
41. James de Vere Allen, ed., The Customs of the Swahili People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 230.
42. Sarah Mirza and Margaret Strobel, Three Swahili Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 9.
43. Ibid., p. 186.
44. Ibid.
45. Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, p. 3.
46. Elizabeth Schmidt, "Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Colonial State in Zimbabwe," Signs, vol. 16, no. 4 (1991).
47. Ibid., p. 99.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., p. 17.
50. Ibid., p. 156.
51. Ibid., p. 21.
52. Ibid., p. 3.
53. Mirza and Strobel, Three Swahili Women, p. 13.
54. Ibid.
55. Swartz, "The Isolation of Men and the Happiness of Women," p. 28.
56. Ibid., p. 34.