Work, Social Status, and Gender in Post-Slavery Mauritania

Katherine A. Wiley

Description

Although slavery was legally abolished in 1981 in Mauritania, its legacy lives on in the political, economic, and social discrimination against ex-slaves and their descendants. Katherine Ann Wiley examines the shifting roles of Muslim arāīn (ex-slaves and their descendants) women, who provide financial support for their families. Wiley uses economic activity as a lens to examine what makes suitable work for women, their trade practices, and how they understand and assert their social positions, social worth, and personal value in their everyday lives. She finds that while genealogy and social hierarchy contributed to status in the past, women today believe that attributes such as wealth, respect, and distance from slavery help to establish social capital. Wiley shows how the legacy of slavery continues to constrain some women even while many of them draw on neoliberal values to connect through kinship, friendship, and professional associations. This powerful ethnography challenges stereotypical views of Muslim women and demonstrates how they work together to navigate social inequality and bring about social change.

Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration and Language
Introduction: I Will Make You My Servant: Social Status, Gender, and Work
1. From Black to Green: Changing Political Economy and Social Status in Kankossa
2. "We Work for Our Lives": Revaluing Femininity and Work in a Post-slavery Market
3. Joking Market Women: Critiquing and Negotiating Gender Roles and Social Hierarchy
4. Women's Market Strategies: Building Social Networks, Protecting Resources, and Managing Credit
5. Making People Bigger: Wedding Exchange and the Creation of Social Value
6. Embodying and Performing Gender and Social Status through the Malafa (Mauritanian veil)
Conclusion: Social Rank in the Neoliberal Era
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Women
• África
• Bizan
• Kankossa
• Mauritania
• Injustice
• Dress
• Haratin
• Gendér
• Social stratification
• Value system
• Colonial Period
• Austerity
• Socioeconomics
• Debt
• Ethnography
• Neoliberalism
• Exchange
• Drought
• Slavery
• Social sciences
• Anthropology
• Islam
• Africa
• Gender studies
• Crédit

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 10 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253036230
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

WORK, SOCIAL STATUS, AND GENDER IN POST-SLAVERY MAURITANIA
WORK, SOCIAL STATUS, AND GENDER IN POST-SLAVERY MAURITANIA
Katherine Ann Wiley
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2018 by Katherine Ann Wiley
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wiley, Katherine Ann, author.
Title: Work, social status, and gender in post-slavery Mauritania / Katherine Ann Wiley.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018014997 (print) | LCCN 2018023311 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253036254 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253036216 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253036223 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Muslim women—Mauritania—Social conditions. | Muslim women—Mauritania—Economic conditions. | Social status—Mauritania. | Mauritania—Social conditions—21st century.
Classification: LCC HQ1815 (ebook) | LCC HQ1815 .W55 2018 (print) | DDC 305.4869709661—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014997
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
For Pat, Ken, and Mike
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Language
Introduction: I Will Make You My Servant: Social Status, Gender, and Work
1 From Black to Green: Changing Political Economy and Social Status in Kankossa
2 “We Work for Our Lives”: Revaluing Femininity and Work in a Post-slavery Market
3 Joking Market Women: Critiquing and Negotiating Gender Roles and Social Hierarchy
4 Women’s Market Strategies: Building Social Networks, Protecting Resources, and Managing Credit
5 Making People Bigger: Wedding Exchange and the Creation of Social Value
6 Embodying and Performing Gender and Social Status Through the Malaḥfa (Mauritanian veil)
Conclusion: Social Rank in the Neoliberal Era
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
T HIS PROJECT NEVER would have happened if not for the wonderful women, men, and children who not only befriended me but incorporated me into their social circles and families in Kankossa. I do not name them here to preserve their privacy, but I will be forever grateful to them for all they taught me about my research questions and, more importantly, life in general. This book exists because of them.
Many other Mauritanians were generous with their time and taught me more than I ever could have hoped for. Mohamedou Mohameden Meyine and Fatimetou housed me in Nouakchott and provided me with access to the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur l’Ouest Saharien . Mohamedou also graciously helped me gain permission to conduct my research. El Hassen Ould Ahmed, Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem, Mariem Mint Baba, Mohamed Khattar, and Cheikh Saad Bouh Kamara provided much helpful guidance on my work. Thank you to the staff at the Institut Mauritanien de Recherche Scientifique , especially the director Jiyid Abdi for helping to facilitate this project. A special thanks, as well, to others in Nouakchott who welcomed me into their homes, especially Soukeina Allaf, Siham Babana, Daouda Diallo, and all my friends from Kankossa who ended up settling there. I am so lucky to have Brahim Bilal Ramdhane as a friend and teacher. His assistance with my research was invaluable, and his and his family’s company made my time in Nouakchott very pleasant. The same goes to Cheikh Sidi Ahmed and Mustapha Ould Sedeti who taught me so much about Hassaniya and life in Kankossa. Thank you also to officials in Kankossa who helped facilitate my stay, including the head of the gendarmes, Sidi Mohamed Ould Haida, and the department governor, Sidi Ahmed Ould Ahmed Ould Houeibib.
This book has also been shaped by many generous and insightful individuals who read portions of it or commented on papers I presented over the six years I worked on it. These include Mara Bernstein, Kate Bishop, Lewis (Addison) Bradford, Elizabeth Burbach, Geert Castryck, Sarah Dillard, Tara Deubel, Brigittine M. French, Dinah Hannaford, Itohan Idumwonyi, Susan N. Johnson-Roehr, Cole Louison, Adeline Masquelier, Susan McKinnon, Erin Pettigrew, Wendell Schwab, Nadine Sieveking, Susan Slyomovics, Beverly Stoeltje, Devorah Shubowitz, Annie Wainscott, and Bruce Whitehouse. Monica Foote and Sarah Gordon’s feedback and commitment to keeping us all on track greatly contributed to the start of this work. I am also grateful to participants in the 2010 Paris conference on Ḥarāṭīn, especially E. Ann McDougall, Bruce Hall, and Alessandra Giuffrida for their comments and suggestions. E. Ann McDougall and Hsain Ilahiane’s reviews of the manuscript greatly improved it and pushed me to think more deeply about these topics. At Indiana Press, thank you to Paige Rasmussen for answering all my questions and to Dee Mortensen for her helpful guidance and feedback. I am also very grateful to Casey Wiley for reminding me to focus on the writing, not just the content, and to Pat and Ken Wiley for providing encouraging feedback and helpful questions.
This project was funded by several generous organizations including the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Project on African Expressive Traditions, and the West African Research Association. After returning from the field, a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Fellowship from Indiana University gave me the time I needed to move forward in my analysis and writing. Much of the project’s development occurred during a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute. I am grateful to Deborah E. McDowell and Lisa Shutt for their support, as well as all the fellows, especially Celeste Day Moore, Jonathan Forney, David Morton, and Erin Nourse for their thoughtful feedback on my work. Thanks to the anthropology department at PLU for all their support as I finished the manuscript, especially Jordan Levy for reading much of it, Ami Shah for many conversations about Africa, and Amanda Taylor and Jennifer Spence for helping me remain moderately calm through it all.
Thank you to Melanie Thurber, Obie Shaw, and Lauren Lewis, who housed me in Nouakchott; conversations with them, as well as with Alassane Ba and Jacque Seeley, greatly shaped my thinking about these issues. Bruce Hall, Timothy Cleaveland, Mohameden Ould-Mey, Ghislaine Lydon, and Ben Soares provided logistical advice about conducting research in Mauritania. Thanks to Khaled Esseissah and Matthew Steele for answering questions on Hassaniya and Arabic.
Finally, this book would not look the way it does without some key individuals. They include my committee at Indiana University: Beth Buggenhagen, Gracia Clark, Maria Grosz-Ngaté, and John Hanson. As my chair, Beth was extraordinarily generous with her time. She taught me much about anthropological theory, was a careful reader whose comments and questions pushed me in exciting directions, and counseled me on how to navigate all stages of the process from grant writing to job seeking to maintaining a healthy life and work balance. Ellie Lapp kindly read the entire manuscript and provided invaluable suggestions and feedback. Finally, thank you to Michael Rings, who reminded me I could do it at every stage of the process and who helped me to revise, plan, and take breaks from the manuscript.
* * *

Two of the chapters have been published elsewhere in slightly different versions. Chapter two appeared as “Joking Market Women: Critiquing and Negotiating Gender and Social Hierarchy in Kankossa, Mauritania” in Africa 84(2014): 101–118© (reprinted with permission). Chapter five appeared as “Making People Bigger: Wedding Exchange and the Creation of Social Value in Rural Mauritania” in Africa Today 62(2016): 49–70©. Permission to publish this material here is gratefully acknowledged.
Note on Transliteration and Language
I N TRANSLITERATING H ASSANIYA for this manuscript, I rely on the system of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. I decided to retain the diacritics to aid specialist readers; I hope they will not detract from the text for broader audiences. As an oral language, Hassaniya is sometimes difficult to transliterate and words are not always uniform across texts (e.g. Ḥarāṭīn may also be written as Ḥrāṭīn). In some cases, I choose a spelling that may be easier for English speakers to pronounce. Note that pronunciation in Hassaniya varies slightly from Modern Standard Arabic, and I try to follow the Hassaniya conventions in the text. Throughout the book, I generally employ the English “s” for the plural to avoid confusion for the reader. I do not use diacritics for Arabic words that commonly appear in English (e.g., haram), for the names of persons, or for place names.
One of the challenges in analyzing a category like “Ḥarāṭīn