The advocated perspective also suggests some other views on gender. As Strath — ern repeatedly points out, gender does not have a simple, one-to-one relationship to persons (e. g. 1988:14ff.) but is cultural constructions that are, strictly speaking, only indirectly linked to persons. One implication of this view is that studies of gender necessarily have […]

The case of the dead man and his wife and lover also illustrates several important points related to individuals and their reactions to contradictory aspects of social­ity. Obviously the man’s sexual infidelity provoked the wife. A man who keeps a lover (or lovers) has to spend a lot of time and resources on her (them) […]

The first analytical line to draw from this case is that it illustrates well what hap­pens when social contexts become mixed. By social context I here mean more or less institutionalised frames that contain not only certain types of practices but also—as a consequence of this—certain ways of thinking. I have elsewhere dis­cussed the term […]

In 1998 I witnessed the dramatic effects of a domestic dispute. I was present dur­ing parts of a funeral process in which a husband, his wife and his lover were cen­tral participants. The man was dead and as a significant part of the funeral process the closest family underwent certain purification rituals (cf. Schapera 1994:163ff.). […]

All arguments have a biography and I owe the readers a brief outline of this one. My ethnographic foundation is first of all fieldwork in a medium-sized, semi-pe­ripheral Botswana village situated on the fringes of the Kalahari. The village con­sists of about 4,500 inhabitants, is populated mostly by people from the Kgalagadi ethnic category, and […]

Jo Helle-Valle Introduction This chapter is basically an argument about how to understand and explain sexu­ality in Africa. It is, needless to say, a highly complex and controversial issue and hence needs some initial qualifications. First, is it at all reasonable to speak of an ‘African sexuality’? Some say yes, others heatedly no. My position […]

This paper includes a theoretical re-thinking of ‘female sexuality’, rooted in an empirical inquiry about ‘excision/female genital mutilation’ and nuptial advisors. The purpose of such an approach is to bring about elements of discussion that reveal the cultural basis of these practices as much as possible. In Mali, the social construction of individual sexuality is […]

Throughout history, subgroups of the African population have renounced the practice of female genital mutilation for one reason or the other: be it the death of a whole cohort of circumcised girls or a prolonged contact with non-practising societies. In Mali, efforts to fight this practice started in the late fifties, evolving into the current […]

The usual feminist model, for explaining ‘female genital mutilation’, stresses women’s lower status in patriarchal societies. The woman in feminist theory is a wife, the subordinated half of a couple (Oyewumi 2000:1094). For the magnon­makanw and bolokoli-kelaw, wives have better social status and greater autonomy Arnfred Page 186 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM Assitan […]

Collectivism and interdependency are strongly favoured in Malian culture, which despises individual uniqueness and commitment to personal interests. An asser­tion such as “I have never seen someone like you, you are one of a kind!” is un­derstood in the Malian context as a very insulting statement, which insinuates ig­norance and selfishness in the person in […]