Women, Power, and Economic Change: The Nandi of KenyaThe author examines the impact of colonialism and the cash economy on the Nandi, a semi-pastoral and patrilineal people of western Kenya, emphasizing changes in women's and men's economic roles and their respective relations to property and to each other. Since the sex roles associated with production and property relations are linked to sex roles in other areas - in the marriage system, husband-wife relations, kinship, cultural ideals of male and female, ritual relations, participation in community affairs - these areas are also analyzed. The author asks whether the changes in Nandi society have been favorable or unfavorable to women. Has their economic position improved or declined as a result of colonialism and socioeconomic change? Has sexual stratification increased or decreased? How have different categories of women - wives, widows, never-married women, participants in woman-woman marriages - been differently affected by changed circumstances? Although most of the book is ethnographic in nature, providing a detailed account of Nandi inter-gender roles in the context of economic history and at the processes that have induced changes in the respective roles of men and women. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Nandi Society Then and Now | 17 |
General Ethnography of Gender Roles A | 57 |
Education and Initiation for 156 Nandi Women | 91 |
Marriage | 98 |
Initiative in Arranging 120 Nandi Marriages | 101 |
Bridewealth Cattle 1920s1970s | 109 |
Polygynists as Percentage of EverMarried Men | 126 |
Colonialism Neocolonialism and Economic | 137 |
Common terms and phrases
activities adult Africa Inland Church African age-set agricultural allocation animals Arap autonomy behavior boys brewing bride bridewealth brother cash crops cash economy cattle ceremony chickens child Christian clan clitoridectomy colonial commoditization cultivation cultural D.C. for Nandi division of labor economic elders eleusine European farm father female feminine-child pollution gender girl's girls Guttman scale herd house property household Huntingford income informants inheritance initiation Kalenjin Kapsabet Kenya Kipsigis kokwet land large numbers levirate live livestock Luo women Maasai maize major male dominance married means of production milk mother Nandi District Nandi women nomic nuclear family Orkoiyot patrilineal percent polygyny relatives ritual roles Sanday sell sexual shillings significant social sons status sublocation Talai term tion traditional traditionally usually vegetables wage labor wedding widow wife's wives woman woman-woman marriage young