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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Gender, Dress and Self-Empowerment: Women and Burial Societies in Botswana |
Author: | Ngwenya, Barbara Ntombi |
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] |