Men Own the Fields, Women Own the Crops: Gender and Power in the Cameroon Grassfields

Men Own the Fields, Women Own the Crops: Gender and Power in the Cameroon Grassfields
ISBN-10
029914674X
ISBN-13
9780299146740
Category
History
Pages
276
Language
English
Published
1996
Publisher
Univ of Wisconsin Press
Author
Miriam Goheen

Description

Based on a decade of fieldwork, this work tracks the negotiations between chiefs and subchiefs and women and men over ritual power, economic power, and administrative power. Though Nso' men obviously dominate their society at both the local level and nationally, women have had power of their own by virtue of their status as women. Men may own the land, for example, but women control the crops through their labor. Goheen explains clearly the place of gender in very complex historical processes, such as land tenure systems, title societies, chieftancy, marriage systems, changing ideas of symbolic capital, and internal and external politics.

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