Being and Becoming

Gender, Culture and Shifting Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa

Chinyere Ukpokolo

• Publisher: Spears Media Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781942876076
• eBook ISBN: 9781942876380
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book illuminates the complex and constantly shifting social and cultural dynamics that shape peoples identity. Specifically, the volume focuses on the intersections of gender with, culture and identity, and at different historical epochs; on the way men and women define themselves and are defined by diverse peoples and cultures across time and space in sub-Saharan Africa. The discussions presented in this anthology primarily focus on being as a state or condition, defined by sex identity, and how this identity shifts, and hence becoming, assuming diverse meanings in disparate societies, contexts, and time. The discourse, therefore, moves from how the perception of the self in cultural and historical contexts has informed actions and at some other times shaped interpretations given to historical facts, to how changing economic realities also shape the definitions and constructions of social and relational issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. The historical trajectories of Islamic religion, colonialism and Christian missionary activities in sub-Saharan Africa have shaped the worlds of the peoples of the region and impacted on gender relations.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface. Being and Becoming: Gender, Culture and Shifting Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Introduction
• Chapter One - What’s Wrong with Essentialism Anyway? African Women and the Question of Identity
• Chapter Two - Gender in Owu, a Timed Masquerade Festival of the Riverine Igbo, Southeast Nigeria
• Chapter Three - Gender, Socialisation and Construction of a Muganda Woman Identity
• Chapter Four - The Violence of Silence and the Limits of Community: The Ikale Woman in Twenty-First Century Nigeria
• Chapter Five - Gender, Identity and Change: The Case of Muslim Women in Northern Nigeria
• Chapter Six - Economic Survival, Masculinity and Shifting Cultural Definition of the Woman’s Identity in a Rural Igbo Society
• Chapter Seven - Indigenous Palm Oil Production in Orile-Owu, Nigeria: A Gendered Technical and Economic Practice
• Chapter Eight - Religion and the Participation of Women in Politics in Zimbabwe: Changing Identities and Perspectives (1960s - 2014)
• Chapter Nine - Contesting the margins of modernity: New women, migration and consumption in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon
• Chapter Ten - Saints and Sinners: African Holocaust, “Clandestine Countermemories” and LGBT Visibility Politics in Postcolonial Africa
• Chapter Eleven - ‘Being and Becoming’: Rethinking Moments of encounter
• Chapter Twelve - Gender Advocacy in Africa: Insights from Ifá Literary Corpus
• Conclusion
• Notes on Contributors
• Index
• Back cover