MEN OWN THE FIELDS, WOMEN OWN THE CROPS by Miriam Goheen ( 9780299146740 )

Item Details

Title:

MEN OWN THE FIELDS, WOMEN OWN THE CROPS
GENDER AND POWER IN THE CAMEROON GRASSFIELDS

By:

Format:

Paperback

List price:	£26.95
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ISBN 10:

029914674X

ISBN 13:

9780299146740

Publisher:

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Pub. date:

15 May, 1996

Pages:

280

Description:

Women's labour has long been the linchpin of male status and power throughout Africa. This work interprets the intricate relations of gender to state-building in Africa by looking historically at control over production and reproduction from the 19th century to the 1990s.

Synopsis:

Women's labor - producing both crops and children - has long been the linchpin of male status and power throughout Africa. This book lucidly interprets the intricate relations of gender to state-building in Africa by looking historically at control over production and reproduction, from the nineteenth century to the present. Miriam Goheen examines struggles over power within the Nso' chiefdom in the highlands of Western Cameroon, between the chiefdom and the state, and between men and women, as the women increasingly reject traditional marriages. Based on a decade of fieldwork, this work tracks the negotiations between chiefs and subchiefs and women and men over ritual power, economic power, and administrative power. Though Nso' men obviously dominate their society at both the local level and nationally, women have had power of their own by virtue of their status as women. Men may own the land, for example, but women control the crops through their labor. Goheen explains clearly the place of gender in very complex historical processes, such as land tenure systems, title societies, chieftancy, marriage systems, changing ideas of symbolic capital, and internal and external politics. In examining women's resistance to traditional patterns of marriage, Goheen raises the question of whether such actions truly change the balance of power between the sexes, or whether resistance to marriage is instead fostering the formation of a new elite class, since it is only the better-educated women of wealthier families who can change the dynamic of power and labor within the household.

Illustrations:

8 b&w photographs, 2 maps

Publication:

Imprint:

University of Wisconsin Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

MEN OWN THE FIELDS, WOMEN OWN THE CROPS (HB)

RADICAL EGALITARIANISM (HB)

RADICAL EGALITARIANISM (PB)