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- Convenors:
-
Pierre Guidi
(IRD, université Paris Cité)
Tirsit Sahldedngil Beyene (Insisitute of Ethiopian Studies)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Anthropology (x) History (x) Gender, Sexuality & Intersectionality (y) Decoloniality & Knowledge Production (y)
- Location:
- Neues Seminargebäude, Seminarraum 14
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The aim of this panel is to seek for new conceptual vocabularies directly drawn from women's experience, and the ways they name and reflect on it, in the Horn of Africa. So doing, it wishes to participate in the current reflection on the production of knowledge on women and gender in Africa.
Long Abstract:
Following a reflection started since independence on the international division of scientific labor (Hountondji, 1990), and more recently in the wake of decolonial and postcolonial studies, a rich reflection about knowledge production on women and gender in Africa (Bouilly, Dutoya & Saiget, 2022; Lewis, 2002), and more generally in the global South (Connel, 2014) is currently underway. Among other things, it interrogates the appropriation of global concepts and how new concepts can be more closely related to women experience. If countries like Nigeria and South Africa are at the forefront of this epistemological work, research carried in the Horn of Africa is less well-known. In order to strengthen the debates at a continental level, we invite scholars working on the Horn of Africa to present papers describing how women name their experience of the power relations in which they are involved. The aim is to seek for new conceptual vocabularies for research directly drawn from women's experience and the ways they reflect on it. Materials used may be oral sources, private writings, literature, the press etc. Research can be conducted with women in various positions in the social space (in terms of class, age, cultural group, occupation etc.), in various situations (in the family, at work, in the daily life, in times of struggle etc.), in the present as well as in the past. This panel wish to contribute to the current collective endeavour of building concepts and setting out agenda for the future of gender studies in Africa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 June, 2023, -Abena Yalley (University of Konstanz)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the dynamics of feminist protests and movements in contemporary Nigeria. It analyses feminist protests in Nigeria, the embodiment of the protests, the changing dynamics and how the internet has become a safe space for feminists and revolutionizing protests.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the dynamics of feminist protests and movements in contemporary Nigeria. African women have long been active in feminist struggles and pushing forward the feminist agenda. Contrary to the preconceived misconception that feminism was imported into Africa from the West, African women have been fighting for equal positions of women in the religious, domestic, and political spheres during pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras. From the eras of Queen Amina of Zaria to Funmilayo Kuti, Nigerian women have been at the forefront of challenging patriarchal norms. Street movements and protests are a defining part of the feminist movement in Nigeria and the focus of the protests is as multifaceted as their oppressions- colonialism, neoliberalism, capitalism, neo-colonialism and patriarchal oppressions. Yet there is little literature that explores the dynamics of these protests. In this paper, I examine feminist protests in Nigeria, the embodiment of the protests, the changing dynamics and how the internet has become a safe space for feminists and revolutionizing protests. Using existing literature, media and digital sources, I analyze a series of feminist protests in Nigeria such as ‘Justice for Titilayo’, ‘#ArewaMeToo’, ‘’#TimesUP’ etc. Particularly, I examine the changing trends in protests and how language (slogans) have become key tools to successful protests.
Ifeoma Ezinne Odinye (Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka Anambra State Nigeria)
Paper short abstract:
The resurgence of GBV disillusionment in Nigeria from 2021-2022 has resulted to multimedia display promoting female consciousness and domination devoid of Igbo traditional cultural decorum. This paper analyses feminist vocabularies employed by selected content creators of Igbo origin in Tik Tok.
Paper long abstract:
TIK Tok as a social media platform discusses popular culture subjects. It is a device intended for entertainment, commodification, affective paradigms and digital activism. The resurgence of disillusionment characterized by Post Covid19 issues, unemployment, quest for fame/money and gender-based violence in Nigeria from 2021-2022, has resulted to multimedia display promoting female consciousness and domination devoid of Igbo traditional cultural decorum. Despite varied criticisms of Tik Tok’s influence on audiences’ psyche (Jiang Qiaolei, 2019), I argue that feminist vocabularies employed by most content creators of Igbo origin in Nigeria are very effectual and mostly non-indigenized in patterns, an argument fit for cultural criticism in the wake of hybridism. This will be achieved through data assembled from Tik Tok app with snapshots of content creators that display a significant support for “sisterhood” targeted towards female energy and liberation. The algorithmic analysis of themes will be achieved through data mining, locative investigation and thick mapping (Berry; Fagerjord, 2017). I intend to discuss selected images, video/audio and texts laced with feminist consciousness as an assertive female tool for digital affect and activism (Sampson et al, 2018). Relevant theoretical approaches will be discussed to provide a holistic background in the findings.
Wei WANG (University of Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
This study elaborates on how spousal power dynamics change with the accumulation process of different types of capital. Besides, the study highlights how patriarchy eventually established Chinese husbands’ domination and thus convinced their wives to agree to migrate to China.
Paper long abstract:
One of the major contributions of the body of literature on cross-border marriage is to de-victimize the migrant spouses, mostly women from the global South. Instead of being depicted as human trafficking victims or simply lured by economic incentives, scholars argue that marriage migrants are agentive beings with diverse motivations related to the global imaginations about the global North sites and men. However, neither China nor migrating to China was desired when Ethiopian women married their Chinese husbands, as I found during my ethnographic fieldwork in Ethiopia. In other words, Chinese husbands possessed insufficient power to persuade their local wives to reside in China when they had just formed their marriages. This study employs a Bourdieusian lens to elaborate on how spousal power dynamics change over time with the accumulation process of different types of capital in the field of Ethiopian extended family. Besides, the study highlights how patriarchy plays a critical role in affecting capital accumulation, which eventually established Chinese husbands’ domination over their wives. Some of these couples have already moved to China.
Nereida Ripero-Muñiz (University of the Witwatersrand)
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents some narratives and self-reflections of Somali migrant women in Nairobi and Johannesburg in order to point out some conceptual notes about women´s vocabularies on describing themselves, their experiences and their identities in a context of displacement.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation is based on part of my research for the book Cosmopolitan Refugees. Somali Migrant women in Nairobi and Johannesburg, that analyses Somali migrant women diasporic experiences in two African global hubs.
The paper uses empirical data in the form of Somali migrant women self-narratives, to point out some conceptual notes about women´s vocabularies on describing themselves, their experiences and their hyphenated identities.
Drawing from interviews with fifty Somali women and conversations carried during fieldwork in both cities, in this paper I present some of women´s reflections and experiences on what it means to be a Somali woman on the move in two diasporic urban contexts from the Global South. Based on women's self-narratives, the paper reflects on how they defined their own identities using particular terminology, the relation the had to some cultural and religious practices and how in the process of doing so, they became vernacular theorist. The paper also explores how women navigate the power relations that they experience as African, Muslim women on the move, in order to fulfill their desires and aspirations about their futures.
This paper aims to contribute to generate knowledge production from a Global South perspective, based on first hand accounts on the migration experiences of Somali women on the move in two main African metropolosis.
Mikal Woldu (SOAS, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
Situated within the changing political contexts in Eritrea and Italy, I explore the extent to which competing conceptions of gender roles, between the home-country and the country of settlement, are negotiated and reconstructed across different dimensions.
Paper long abstract:
Migration is a gendered experience, shaping individuals differently. Literature on migration suggests that with the experience of displacement from one’s cultural and social moorings to another, ‘traditional’ social structures tend to be weakened, resulting in changes to the traditional division of labour and understating of gender relations and roles. By looking at the case study of Eritrean women in Milan, in this paper I argue for a more nuanced analysis of the ways in which gendered norms and power dynamics across multiple transnational spaces are renegotiated over time.
Situated within the changing political contexts in Eritrea and Italy, I explore the extent to which competing conceptions of gender roles, between the home-country and the country of settlement, are negotiated and reconstructed across different dimensions, by looking at participants’ narratives around their sense of identity and positionality within the Eritrean community in Milan.
While Eritrean women experienced an unprecedented up-ward social mobility during the liberation movement (1961-1991), both in the continent and in the diaspora, ‘traditional’ Eritrean gendered norms were nevertheless situationally evoked and expected within the private space of the home. Based on eight months of fieldwork, in this paper I examine the case study of Eritrean women in Milan and their experiences between the late 1970s and 2015. I explore the changing Eritrean-specific gender roles emerging within transnational spaces and explore the extent to which they remain the same or different over time, and across generations.
Dorothea Hilhorst (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Marie Rose Bashwira (Centre de recherche et d'expertise en Genre et développement (CREGED))
Paper short abstract:
Transactional sex (TS) in conflict areas is multi-faceted, from sex work to occasional transactions. It helps survival but is risky and rooted in unequal power. We seek a future where voices and needs of people engaging in TS will be leading in policies and strategies of humanitarian agencies.
Paper long abstract:
Transactional sex (TS) in conflict areas is multi-faceted, from sex work to occasional transactions. It helps survival but is risky and rooted in unequal power. Humanitarian responses to TS have traditionally silenced it or have been focused on ‘rescue’ – seeking to provide sex workers with alternative livelihoods. These responses reflect a moral apprehension of transactional sex without recognizing agency. They are hampered by biases and taboos that may (re)produce or even aggravate structural violence against the people involved.
The participatory research programme ListenH addresses the perplexity of TS in humanitarian contexts and the resulting inadequacy of support to individuals and communities living through or recovering from conflict and disaster who engage in it.
The paper explores current representations of transactional sex in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Discourses on transactional sex in DRC are inextricably interwoven with stories of sexual violence. Lately, the sexual violence within humanitarian response programmes has further complicated the discussions on how to represent and support men and women engaging in transactional sex.
The paper draws on a survey among sex workers and a number of focus group discussions. It brings out how multi-faceted transactional sex in the country is, and seeks to contribute to a future where voices and needs of people engaging in transactional sex will be leading in policies and strategies of humanitarian agencies and other service providers.