Amazon.com: Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: Gender, Culture and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist (9780852559116): Dorothy L. Hodgson: Books

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

The dominant trend in pastoralist studies has long assumed that pastoralism and pastoral gender relations are inherently patriarchal. The contributors to this collection, in contrast, use diverse analytic approaches to demonstrate that pastoralist genderrelations are dynamic, relational, historical and produced through complex local-translocal interactions. Combining theoretically sophisticated analysis with detailed case studies, this collection should appeal to those doing research and teaching in African studies, gender studies, anthropology and history. North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } The dominant trend in pastoralist studies has long assumed that pastoralism and pastoral gender relations are inherently patriarchal. The contributors to this collection, in contrast, use diverse analytic approaches to demonstrate that pastoralist genderrelations are dynamic, relational, historical and produced through complex local-translocal interactions. Combining theoretically sophisticated analysis with detailed case studies, this collection should appeal to those doing research and teaching in African studies, gender studies, anthropology and history. North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP

Editorial Reviews

Review

... opens new comparative perspectives and compels us to think again about familiar assumptions and to make unfamiliar connections between elements that have hitherto remained discrete. Otherwise, we too will end up, like colonial administrators, as the last pastoral patriarchs, long since left behind by our putative subjects.' - Richard Waller in IJAHS 'Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa is an important contribution to the scholarly literature on gender relations in cattle-keeping communities. This volume, in fact, is the first book-length work on the subject...The eleven chapters...all contribute to the book's central thesis that scholars who rely on, and often valorize, men as both informants and true pastoralists, have consistently overlooked women's roles in pastoralist society. For this point alone, Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa is welcome, as it will surely provoke fruitful debate and further enquiry...provides a wealth of rich case studies, advancing our appreciation not only for women in pastoralist societies, but for pastoralism in general.' - Christian Jennings in Journal of African History '...reflects the emergence of a generation of scholars who since the early 1980s have challenged the existing literature on pastoral societies for itsfailure to recognise the significance of gender relations in pastoral life; and Hodgsons's introductory chapter provides a critical overview of the anthropological and ethnographic literature from this perspective. ...a significant emphasis on the cultural and social elements of pastoral life as well as material expressions of poverty which brings to life the complex patterns of gender relations including at the household level. ...In challenging conventional understandings of gender relationships withinpastoral societies Hodgson rejects the notion of pastoral culture as determined solely by ecological and economic systems; arguing instead that pastoralist culture and gender relations are complex historical products of the actions and ideas on men and women and reactions to external influences...add important insights into the pastoral condition.' - Cherry Gertzel in ARAS

More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Dorothy Louise Hodgson Page

Dorothy Hodgson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, former Director of the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers, and President of the Association for Feminist Anthropology. She has worked and conducted research among Maasai pastoralists in Tanzania since 1985. Her research and writing have been supported over the years by grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, American Council for Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, American Philosophical Society, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

To learn more about her research, listen to her recent podcast interview with Africa Past & Present: http://afripod.aodl.org/2011/04/afripod-51/