Gendered Histories between the Great Lakes: Varieties and Limits

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Periodical article

Title:	Gendered Histories between the Great Lakes: Varieties and Limits
Author:	Schoenbrun, David L.
Year:	1996
Periodical:	International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:	29
Issue:	3
Pages:	461-492
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Uganda
Subjects:	gender relations Ganda (Uganda) Hima history ethnic groups Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Women's Issues History and Exploration Historical/Biographical Cultural Roles agriculture Sex Roles
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/221357
Abstract:	This essay delimits and describes varieties of gendered histories between East Africa's Great Lakes before the 15th century. Using a combination of linguistic and ethnographic data, the author describes the character and growth of gendered units of social organization among the Hima (Rutara) cattle pastoralists and the Ganda (North Nyanza) banana farmers in what is now Uganda. He argues that contests over women's labour and reproductive power, and opportunities for women to create and wield symbolic capital, together governed the elaboration of banana farming and cattle pastoralism in the centuries after AD 1000. The essay focuses on gendered divisions of labour and gendered identities in 'houses'. It also peruses the ethnography of Hima and Ganda marriage ceremonies, where, amongst others, women are transformed into wives. App. (kinship and culture vocabulary), notes, ref.