This is a comprehensive overview on the existing literature on gender in Africa. It covers areas such as Western perceptions, colonial morality, religion and politics.

A comprehensive overview of the existing literature on gender, bringing together important and influential essays from widely disparate sources. A valuable collection for scholars and students. ANDREA CORNWALL is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex Contributors include: JOSEPHINE BEOKU-BETTS, NIARA SUDARKASA, OBIOMA NNAEMEKA, RUDOLF P. GAUDIO, TIMOTHY BURKE, JANE I. GUYER, MEGAN VAUGHAN, JANET M. BUJRA, IRIS BERGER, BARBARA COOPER, DEBORAH GAITSKELL, STEPHAN E. MEISCHER, BOLANLE AWE, JEAN ALLMAN, SUSAN GEIGER Published in association with the International African Institute North America: Indiana U Press

Table of contents

This volume reports on the state of crisis in Africa in the early twenty-first century. Africa, on the eve of the ‘independence revolution’, was the continent of hope and high expectations. By the third decade of independence, optimism had been replaced by dismality. African states had been beset by ethno-political squabbles, military rule, civil wars, Islamic and insurgent movements, extreme poverty and disease. With the ascent of redemocratization in the 1990s and of ‘new’ pan-Africanism derived from the formation of the African Union, Africa appeared set to claim its vaunted destiny. This book asks, with hindsight to the first decade of the twenty-first century: how real was the renaissance in African life? If the dismal African condition is a phase in the historical development of Africa, this volume does not see any golden age in the past to which Africa aspires to return. There is clearly a continuation and persistence of crisis, with an absence of good governance, personalisation of state power, widespread disease, and policy failure in education, economy and infrastructural development. Although endowed with abundant human and natural resources, Africa remains the least developed and most indebted continent. Whither then the African Renaissance? The methodologies that underpin the contributions in this book are as diverse as the specialisations of the contributors. The collection questions ideologically protected assumptions and presumptions, presenting Africa as it is, because it is only by knowing where Africa truly stands that a proper direction can be charted for it.

Gender is one of the most productive, dynamic, and vibrant areas of Africanist research today. This volume looks at Africa now that gender has come into play to consider how the continent, its people, and the term itself have changed.

One of the major issues this book examines is what the African experience and identity have contributed to the debate on citizenship in the era of globalisation. The volume presents case studies of different African contexts, illustrating the gendered aspects of citizenship as experienced by African men and women. Citizenship carries manifold gendered aspects and given the distinct gender roles and responsibilities, globalisation affects citizenship in different ways. It further examines new forms of citizenship emerging from the current era dominated by a neoliberal focus. The book is not exclusive in terms of theorisation but its focus on African contexts, with an in-depth analysis taking into consideration local culture and practices and their implications for citizenship, provides a good foundation for further scholarly work on gender and citizenship in Africa.

Focusing on Malawi, Johnson proposes a shift in emphasis to gender justice as an alternative to human and women's rights.

One of the critical questions that Kenyans have continuously asked is what went wrong in January and February 2008 with the "peace" they had hitherto enjoyed. There have not been readily available answers to this fundamental question. The collection of papers presented in this book attempt to provide, as a starting point, possible explanations for the events of early 2008 including key background issues in Kenyan history since pre-independence times. Based on a series of public lectures titled (Re)membering Kenya organized by the volume editors together with Twaweza Communications and sponsored by the Goethe-Institut Kenya, the Institute for International Education and The Ford Foundation the lecture series became a way of trying to get scholars to engage meaningfully with the Kenyan public on critical matters pertaining to their nationhoodóeven if this entailed first calling to question the "lie" about the very ideas and practices upon which that nationhood is assumed to stand. A key lesson drawn from the unfolding discussions at the Goethe-Institut Kenya was that the 2007 elections' debacle was merely the cusp of momentous crises to do with among other issues, governance, law and order, Parliament's abdication of its role in ensuring accountability from the Executive, dilemmas of identity and socio-economic marginality. The book is the first of three volumes under the (Re)membering Kenya series whose overall objective is to cast some new light on the various trajectories that informed the happenings of January 2008. The present volume brings together some of the best interpretative writing and suggestions on pertinent questions, past and present, ranging from the architecture of Kenya's ethnicity, Kenyanness, generational competition, socialization and violence, iconic representations of identity to the ongoing debate on the efficacy of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). It is hoped that the issues debated during the public lectures and documented herein will spur further discussions in other spaces within civil society organizations, among activists and in newspapers where the public might continue to expand their thinking on the complex task of (Re)membering Kenya.

In the global South there is potential for politics to marginalize the diverse perspectives of subaltern communities. Exploring ongoing and new feminist dialogues in the global South, this book examines the ways in which dominant epistemologies are challenged, unique identities formed, and the implications for the global feminist agenda.

Images and stories about African sexuality abound in today's globalized media. Frequently old stereotypes and popular opinion inform these stories, and sex in the media is predominately approached as a problem in need of solutions and intervention. The authors gathered here refuse an easy characterization of African sexuality and instead seek to understand the various erotic realities, sexual practices, and gendered changes taking place across the continent. They present a nuanced and comprehensive overview of the field of sex and sexuality in Africa to serve as a guide though the quickly expanding literature. This collection offers a set of texts that use sexuality as a prism for studying how communities coalesce against the canvas of larger political and economic contexts and how personal lives evolve therein. Scholars working in Africa, the U.S., and Europe reflect on issues of representation, health and bio-politics, same-sex relationships and identity, transactional economies of sex, religion and tradition, and the importance of pleasure and agency. This multidimensional reader provides a comprehensive view of sexuality from an African perspective.