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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Gender, Dress and Self-Empowerment: Women and Burial Societies in Botswana
Author:Ngwenya, Barbara NtombiISNI
Year:2002
Periodical:African Sociological Review (ISSN 1027-4332)
Volume:6
Issue:2
Pages:1-27
Language:English
Notes:biblio. refs.
Geographic terms:Botswana
East Africa
Subjects:Tswana
burial societies
clothing
women
Women's Issues
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Religion and Witchcraft
Cultural Roles
organizations
Status of Women
gender
empowerment
Burial
social networks
gender relations
Funeral rites and ceremonies
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487324
Abstract:One measure of relative poverty and humiliation among the Tswana of Botswana is wearing tattered clothes ('makatana'). Literally, a dress ('seaparo') means to adorn oneself. Particular kinds of clothes have multiple meanings and authorize and legitimize the participation of certain social groups in given situations. This paper focuses on specific ways in which women in local institutions known as burial societies ('diswaeti') ceremonially and ritualistically empower themselves through an event known as 'kapeso' - to be garbed, enrobed or dressed. Burial societies organize and disburse emergency financial relief to members' households in distress due to the social affliction of death. The majority of members are women. They take on a particular dress code as ritual object of social power to perform gendered social roles that closely conform to status obligations to self, family, kin and community in a particular funeral context of ever-increasing AIDS deaths. The women's dress code enables them to dramatize social action in ways that refedine gender relations, practices of spirituality across denominational affiliation and Tswana humanism ('botho'). Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited]
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