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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Elephant Shooting: Colonial Law and Indirect Rule in Kaoko, Northwestern Namibia, in the 1920s and 1930s
Author:Rizzo, LorenaISNI
Year:2007
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:48
Issue:2
Period:July
Pages:245-266
Language:English
Geographic term:Namibia
Subjects:indirect rule
colonial law
criminal procedure
power
historiography
gender roles
1920-1929
1930-1939
colonialism
History and Exploration
Law, Human Rights and Violence
Women's Issues
Historical/Biographical
Law, Legal Issues, and Human Rights
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/4501041
Abstract:The law as a means of sociopolitical control in colonial states has gained significance as an issue in the recent historiography of Africa. This article discusses the making of a criminal case in colonial Kaoko, northwestern Namibia in the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses on the problem of African voice and narrative and the ways in which they have been transformed into written evidence in the course of legal investigation. It demonstrates that the archival documents which emerged from this case require careful methodological scrutiny if they are to be used for the reconstruction of the region's past. It goes beyond colonial law as constituting a particular discourse to conceive colonial law as a space for intervention and agency for both colonized and colonizers. The central argument raised in the article is that while the South African administration in northwestern Namibia allegedly aimed at prosecuting culprits and securing evidence for their transgressions, men and women in Kaoko used colonial law as an arena for the negotiation of social and political issues. Concerned with the case's impact on the configuration of gender, the article shows how colonial law became both a site of male representation and power, and a space for female contestation of male claims to sociopolitical mastery. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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