Public debates about luo widow inheritance christianity, tradition, and AIDS in Western Kenya

Christianity and Public Culture in Africa

Volumn , Issue , 2011, Pages 109-130

  Prince, Ruth ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84871181234     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (64)

1. Ruth Prince, "Salvation and Tradition: Configurations of faith in a time of death", Journal of Religion in Africa 37, no. 1(2007):84-115;
2. Wenzel Geissler and Ruth Prince, The Land Is Dying: Contingency, Creativity and Confict in Western Kenya (New York: Berghahn, 2009).
3. A. B. C. Ocholla-Ayayo, Traditional Ideology and Ethics among the Southern Luo (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1976);
4. David W. Cohen and E. S. A. Odhiambo, Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (London: James Currey, 1989);
5. see also Matthew Carotenuto, "Riwuok E teko: Cultivating identity in Colonial and Postcolonial Kenya", Africa Today 53, no. 2(2006):53-73.
6. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone, 2002);
7. see also Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989);
8. Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).
9. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940);
10. Evans-Pritchard, "Luo Tribes and Clans", Rhodes-Livingstone Journal 7(1949):24-40;
11. Evans-Pritchard, "Marriage Customs of the Luo of Kenya", in The Position of Women in Primitive Societies and Other Essays in Social Anthropology, red. Evans-Pritchard (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), 228-44.
12. Paul Mboya, Luo kitigi gi timbegi (A Handbook of Luo Customs) (Kisumu: Anyange Press, 1938), chap. 12.
13. Elderly Luo say that chola refers to the banana leaf string the widow wore after the interment. See also Mboya, Luo, 116. A similar word is used among some bantuspeaking groups in east Africa.
14. Gordon M. Wilson, Luo Customary Law and Marriage Laws Customs (Nairobi: Government Printers, 1968).
15. Margaret Hay, "Women as Owners, Occupants, and Managers of Property in Colonial Western Kenya", in African Women and the Law: Historical Perspectives, ed. Hay and Marcia Wright (Boston: African Studies Center, Boston University, 1982), 120.
16. Betty Potash, "Wives of the Graves: Widows in a Rural Luo Community", in Widows in African Societies: Choices and Constraints, ed. Potash (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 44-65.
17. Elizabeth Francis, "Migration and Changing Divisions of Labour: Gender relations and Economic Change in Koguta, Western Kenya", Africa 65, no. 2(1995):197-215.
18. R. J. M. Swynnerton, A Plan to Intensify the Development of African Agriculture in Kenya (Nairobi: Hm Stationery Office, 1955).
19. S. Coldham, "the Effect of Registration of Title upon Customary Land Rights in Kenya", Journal of African Law 22, no. 2(1978):100-101.
20. Achola O. Pala, "Daughters of the Lakes and Rivers: Colonization and the land Rights of Luo Women", in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. mona etienne and eleanor leacock (New York: Praeger, 1980), 186-213.
21. See also Parker Shipton, "the Kenyan land tenure Reform: Misunderstandings in the Public Creation of Private Property", in Land and Society in Contemporary Africa, ed. R. E. Downs and S. P. Reyna (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988);
22. Shipton, "Debts and Trespasses: Land, Mortgages, and the Ancestors in Western Kenya", Africa 62, no. 3(1992):357-88;
23. Shipton, "Land and Culture in Tropical Africa: Soil, Symbols, and the Metaphysics of the Mundane", Annual Review of Anthropology 23, no. 1(1994):347-77.
24. A. O. Pala, "Changes in Economy and Ideology: A Study of the Joluo of Kenya (with Special Reference to Women) " (Phd diss., Harvard University, 1977);
25. Cf. Martin Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
26. Pala, "Daughters"; Francis, "Migration"; Margarethe Silberschmidt, "Women Forget That Men Are the Masters": Gender Antagonism and Socio-economic Change in Kisii District, Kenya (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999).
27. When Potash conducted her study of Luo widows (1973-76), land registration had just commenced in nyanza Province. Hence, although people experienced land shortages in some areas, widows' rights still seemed secure. However, Potash quotes the director of social services of nyanza Province complaining (in a 1984 Newspaper report) that older widows were forced off their late husband's land and mentions a woman's organization that built a dormitory for homeless widows in Kisumu. Potash, "Wives", 35.
28. Several factors have undermined women's affinal relations: the decline in and delay of bridewealth; the increasingly common pattern of young women having children with different men before getting married; and women's independent economic activities, making them less reliant on marriage. the economic and emotional burden of AIDS has put further strains on marriage and affinal relations. 19. T. M. Okeyo and A. K. Allen, "influence of Widow inheritance on the epidemiology of AIDS in Africa", African Journal of Medical Practice 1, no. 1(1994):20-25.
29. Nancy Luke, "Widows and 'Professional Inheritors': Understanding AIDS risk Perceptions in Kenya", paper presented at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America, may 8-11, 2002, Atlanta.
30. L. A. Adeokun and R. M. Nalwadda, "Serial Marriages and AIDS in Masaka District", Health Transition Review 7(suppl.) (1997):49-66;
31. Jacob Adetunji and Jacob Oni, "Rising Proportions of Young Widows and the AIDS Epidemic in Africa", paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 6-10, 1999, Chicago;
32. Isaac Luginaah, David Elkins, Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale, Tamara Landry, and Mercy Mathui, "Challenges of a Pandemic: HIV/AIDS-related Problems Affecting Kenyan Widows", Social Science and Medicine 60, no. 6(2005):1219-28;
33. Nancy Luke, "The Cultural Significance of Widowhood", paper presented at the virtual conference on African Households, Population Studies Centre, University of Pennsylvania, 2001;
34. J. R. S. Malungo, "Sexual Cleansing (Kusalazya) and Levirate marriage (Kunjilila mung'anda) in the era of AIDS: Changes in Perceptions and Practices in Zambia", Social Science and Medicine 53(2001):371-82;
35. James Ntozi, "Widowhood, Remarriage and Migration during the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Uganda", Health Transition Review 7(suppl.) (1997):125-44.
36. K. Agot, B. O. Agot, W. O. Agingu, J. O. Ndinya-Achola, and E. A. Bukusi, "Sexual Behaviour and HIV Prevalence in Inherited and Un-inherited Widows in bondo district, Kenya: Baseline Results", U. S. national institutes of Health, NLM Gateway, http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/meetingAbstracts/102282591.html.
37. D. Nyong'O and O. Ongalo, "from despair to Hope: Women's right to own and Inherit Property", http//www.policyproject.com/pubs/countryreports/ Ken-inheritancerights.pdf. nyong'o and Ongalo claim, "In no other community in Kenya is the twin problem of societal and cultural practices-which discriminate against women and thereby translate into widespread of [sic] HIV/AIDS-more stark than within luo nyanza." All websites cited here were accessible during research for this chapter but may no longer be so.
38. Kenyan groups include the Education Centre for Women in Democracy (Siaya), the federation of Women lawyers in Kenya, the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Foundation, and the Kenya AIDS Intervention Prevention Project Group. the International Groups active in this controversy include Amistad, the Association for Women's Rights in development, Concern, family Health International, Human Rights Watch, MS-Kenya (Danish Association for International Cooperation), and Plan International. religious groups include the Catholic register, Giovani Impegno Missionario, Springs ministry, and the Association of Adventist Women. See also V. N. Kimani, "Human Sexuality: Meaning and Purpose in Selected Communities in Contemporary Kenya", Ecumenical Review (WCC) 56, no. 4(2004):404-21.
39. Human Rights Watch, "AIDS: Success in Fight Threatened by Rights Abuses: Conference Must Promote Rights-Based Approach to HIV Pandemic", July 17, 2006, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/17/canada13744.htm;
40. see also Human Rights Watch, "Double Standards: Women's Property Rights Violations in Kenya", March 3, 2003, http://www.hrw.org/reports/ 2003/kenya0303/;
41. Association for Women's rights in development, "HIV/AIDS and land ownership rights", http://www.awid.org/go.php?stid=1629.
42. http://www.springsministriestrust.net;
43. see also "Widows Conference, Organised by Springs Ministries, Kisumu, Kenya, December 2004", Newsletter of the Ecumenical HIV/AIDS Initiative in Africa 7(March 2005):4-6, http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/mission/ ehaia7-e.pdf.
44. The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), "Kenya: Education leads tribal Elders to Support Women's Inheritance Rights", february 2006, http://www.pepfar.gov/pepfar/press/84657.htm.
45. W. Maina, "Kenya: the State, Donors and the Politics of Democratization", in Civil Society and the Aid Industry, ed. Alison van Rooy (London: Earthscan, 1998).
46. David W. Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967);
47. see also David W. Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, "Ayany, Malo and Ogot-Historians in Search of a Luo Nation", Cahiers d'études africaines 27, nos. 105-6(1987):269-86.
48. A. B. C. Ocholla-Ayayo, The Luo Culture (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1980);
49. Webb Keane, "Materialism, Missionaries, and Modern Subjects in Colonial Indonesia", in Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, ed. Peter van der Veer (New York: Routledge, 1996), 159-60.
50. See also J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).
51. See David W. Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in Africa (London: James Currey, 1992).
52. A. Haugerud, The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993);
53. Lynn Thomas, Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
54. see also Toshiharu Abe, "The Concepts of Chira and Dhoch among the Luo of Kenya: Transition, Deviation and Misfortune", in Themes in Socio-Cultural Ideas and Behaviour among the Six Ethnic Groups of Kenya, ed. Nobuhiro nagashima (Tokyo: Hitotsubashi University, 1981), 127-39.
55. For example, Raringo, Chike jaduong e dalane (The Rules of the old Man in His Home) (Nairobi: Three Printers and Stationers, 2001).
56. A striking parallel with the proliferation of Luo rules is the elaboration, among the melanesian Kwaio, of menstrual taboos. rather than being age-old traditions, these taboos arose in the 1940s, at a time when Christianity opened up New avenues for women's independence, and David Akin argues that they reconstituted disciplinary control by men over women. by the 1990s, these taboos had grown so stringent and onerous that violations became almost inevitable, and the costs of paying compensation for breaking them impoverished whole communities. See Akin, "Concealment, Confession, and Innovation in Kwaio Women's Taboos", American Ethnologist 30, no. 3(2003):381-400.
57. See Bethwell A. Ogot, Politics and the AIDS Epidemic in Kenya, 1983-2003 (Kisumu: Anyange Press, 2004).
58. G. E. M. Ogutu, Ker Jaramogi Is Dead, Who Shall Lead My People? Reflections on Past, Present, and Future Luo Thought and Practice (Kisumu: Palwa Research Publications, 1995), 13. This text is written in English and interspersed with Dholuo terms, which the author translates himself. Subsequent references appear in parentheses in text.
59. D. Nyong'O and O. Ongalo, "from Despair to Hope: Women's Right to Own and inherit Property", http://www.policyproject.com/pubs/ countryreports/Ken-inheritancerights.pdf.
60. Eugene Cotran, "Marriage, Divorce and Succession laws in Kenya: is Integration or unification Possible?" Journal of African Law 40, no. 2(1996):194-204;
61. Kibwana Kibwana and Lawrence Mute, eds., Law and the Quest for Gender Equality in Kenya (Nairobi: Claripress, 2000). the New constitution that was put up for referendum in 2005 did encode improved women's property rights, but it was rejected by the electorate because it also encoded a massive increase in presidential powers.
62. Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
63. Jean Comaroff, "The Diseased Heart of Africa: medicine, Colonialism, and the Black Body", in Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life, ed. Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993): 305-27.
64. See Wenzel Geissler and Ruth Prince, "life Seen: Touch and Vision in the making of Sex in Western Kenya", Journal of Eastern African Studies 1, no. 1(2007):123-49.