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Family Concerns: Gender and Ethnicity in Pre-Colonial West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Sandra E. Greene
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For at least the past twenty years, historians of pre-colonial Africa have studied gender and ethnic relations, but have focused on either gender or ethnicity without making reference to the other. This essay redresses this neglect by demonstrating that changes in gender and ethnic relations within pre-colonial Africa so profoundly influenced each other that it is impossible to understand one without also taking into consideration the other. Documenting this intersection requires more than simply reconstructing how ethnic groups (in their efforts to compete with others for social and political status) altered gender relations within their societies by handling differentially the affairs of their female and male members. It involves more than analyzing how those disadvantaged because of their gender used the prevailing ethnic relations to ameliorate their own situations, and how these actions in turn altered ethnic relations in the societies in which they lived. It requires as well that we reconceptualize the very definition of ethnicity.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 44 , supplement S7: Complicating Categories: Gender, Class, Race and Ethnicity , December 1999 , pp. 15 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1999

References

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4. This, of course, has much to do with the fact that scholarly interest in masculinity is relatively recent in comparison with the more developed field of women's studies. Some recent studies on African masculinity include Bujra, Janet, “Men at Work in the Tanzanian Home: How Did They Ever Learn?”, in Hansen, Karen Tranberg (ed.), African Encounters with Domesticity (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992), pp. 242–265Google Scholar ; Keis, Gerald and Abdullahi, Salisu A., “Masculine Power and Gender Ambiguity in Urban Hausa Society”, African Urban Studies, 16 (1983), pp. 39–53Google Scholar ; Chinjerai, Shire, “Men Don't Go to the Moon: Language, Space and Masculinity in Zimbabwe”, in Cornwall, Andrea and Lindisfarne, Nancy (eds), Dislocating Masculinity (New York, 1994), pp. 147–158Google Scholar ; Lindsey, Lisa, “No Need […] To Think of Home?': Masculinity and Domestic Life on the Nigerian Railway c.1940-61”, Journal of African History, 39 (1998), pp. 439–466CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and the special issue on masculinities in Southern Africa in the Journal of Southern African Studies, 24 (1998)Google Scholar . There is, in addition, a growing literature on homosexuality among African men, a topic that at times also touches on issues of masculinity.

5. For a more detailed discussion of this see, Greene, Sandra E., “Land, Lineage and Clan in Early Anlo”, Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, 5 (1981).Google Scholar

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7. See Greene, Sandra E., Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change: A History of the Anlo-Ewe (Portsmouth, NH, 1996)Google Scholar , introduction and ch. 2.

8. Ibid., introduction.

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17. For a more detailed discussion of these prescriptions, see , Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change, p. 31.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., pp. 82-86.

19. See Seidel, H., “Der Yewe Dienst in Togolande” Zeitschrifi ftir Ajrikanische und Oceanische Sprachen, 3 (1897), pp. 166–167Google Scholar , and , Greene, Field Note 65Google Scholar : Interview with Togbui Dzobi Adzinku, 6 January 1988, Anloga.

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24. To pawn an individual means that a person hand a relative, usually a child, to another in exchange for a loan. The child would live with the lender, working for him or her. The work the child performed for the lender would serve as interest on the loan. The child could not return to his or her family until the loan principle was repaid. For a more extensive discussion of pawning, see Falola, Toyin and Lovejoy, Paul E., Pawnship in Africa: Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective (Boulder, CO, 1994).Google Scholar

25. See , Greene, Field Note 70Google Scholar : Interview with Mr Kwami Kpodo, 12 January 1988; and Field Note 92: Interview with Togbui Amegashi Afeku IV, 18 February 1988, Tema. See also SC 14/1, p. 208; and Anlo Traditional Council Minute Book No. 3: 14/4/6–32/7/87, pp. 14-37 (Anloga Traditional Council Office, Anloga, Ghana).

26. Torgby, Richard Tetteh, “The Origin and Organisation of the Yewe Cult” B.A. long essay, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Ghana, Legon (1977), pp. 24, 31.Google Scholar

27. For more discussion of this, see , Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change, pp. 97–98.Google Scholar

28. , Binetsch, “Beantwortung mehrerer”, p. 46.Google Scholar