Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year In 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands to critical acclaim. Here Amadiume boldly argues that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference. This new Essential Amadiume edition illustrates for a new generation of readers the specifically Western origins of the gender essentialisms to which much current gender theory reacts. In showing how those notions have been projected onto other cultures through colonialism, and in exploring traditional west African practices that conceive of gender otherwise, it re-opens other alternatives to them.

Autorentext

Ifi Amadiume is a award-winning poet and a political activist as well as an academic. She has lived in Nigeria and the UK and is currently a professor at Dartmouth College, USA. There, she teaches both in the Department of Religion and on the African-American Studies Programme. Professor Amadiume is author of the influential Male Daughters, Female Husbands(Zed Books, 1988) which won the Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year award in 1989.

Inhalt

Foreword to the Essential Amadiume Edition
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: The 19th Century

1. Gender and Economy
2. Women, Wealth, Titles and power
3. Gender and Political Organization
4. The Politics of Motherhood: Women and the Ideology-Making Process
5. The Ideology of Gender
6. Ritual and Gender

Part II: The Colonial Period
7. Colonialism and the Erosion of Women's Power
8. The Erosion of Women's Power

Part III: The Post-Independence Period
9. The Marginalisation of women's Position
10. Wealth, Titles and Motherhood
11. The Female Element in Other Igbo Societies
12. Gender, Class and Female Solidarity
13. Conclusion

Appendixes
Bibliography
Glossary
Index