Ousseina Alidou, Engaging modernity: Muslim women and the
politics of agency in postcolonial Niger. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2005. Pp. xxi, 235. Hb. $45.00.
Challenging conventional discourse about African Muslim women as
passive victims of religious, ethnic, economic, and cultural oppression,
Alidou analyzes the lives and discourse of three prominent women of Niger.
She focuses on these women's agency, understood as a capacity to
realize one's aspirations in spite of obstacles. More broadly, she
discusses the meaning of modernity for Muslim women in Niger today. Alidou
is self-reflexive as she incorporates her own voice in the study –
the voice of a Muslim female linguist and cultural critic from Niger who
now resides and teaches in the United States. The book's qualitative
data comprise Niger-based participant observations, interviews, and
literary texts (poems, songs, fairytale). A chapter on Niger's
political economy of education is supplemented with quantitative
sociological data on educational achievement.