Pathos and Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present

by Benjamin N. Lawrance (Editor), Joanna Davidson (Editor)

Overview

The collected essays in Pathos and Power provide a critical exploration of widowhood in Africa through a series of historical and contemporary case studies. The book challenges a simplistic understanding of widowhood by highlighting how the experience varies according to age, class, race, religion, and geographic location. The contributors investigate how the category of widowhood can obscure or reveal various social dynamics while demonstrating the diversity of material, symbolic, and embodied circumstances faced by African widows. The volume considers the forces shaping the lives of widows by examining the structural and legal challenges they encounter, including discriminatory practices in social, economic, and political spheres. Through discussions of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts, it explores the intersections of custom, law, patriarchy, and feminism while delving into the potentially liberatory opportunities that widowhood sometimes presents. The book also raises broader questions about gender, personhood, marriage, autonomy, and national identity, emphasizing how widowhood informs key conceptual debates in African studies. Editors Joanna Davidson and Benjamin N. Lawrance bring together scholars across such fields as anthropology, gender studies, history, law, and political science. The authors employ a range of methodologies, including archival research, ethnography, and storytelling, to illuminate widowhood in new and innovative ways. The volume’s rich empirical studies and theoretical insights offer a valuable resource for scholars seeking to understand widowhood and its broader implications in African societies. CONTRIBUTORS Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf Fisayo Ajala Catherine E. Bolten Abbass Braham Mariana Candido Joanna Davidson Mariana Dias Paes Ramadan El-Khouli Casey Golomski Juelma Gomes de Matos Ngãla Benjamin N. Lawrance Kenda Mutongi Richard L. Roberts Enid Schildkrout Kate Skinner Wallace Teska Benjamin Twagira Sarah J. Zimmerman

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821426449
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	07/08/2025
Series:	Ohio RIS Africa Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	365
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Benjamin N. Lawrance is a professor of history and, by courtesy, law at the University of Arizona, where he teaches courses in history and law about Africa, slavery, migration, refugees, and asylum. He has published twenty books, including Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling. He is the emeritus editor in chief of the African Studies Review.

Joanna Davidson is an associate professor of anthropology at Boston University. She is the author of Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa; a coeditor of Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World; and the author of articles in journals such as American Ethnologist and the African Studies Review.

Table of Contents

Cover Page Ohio University Research in International Studies Ohio University Research in International Studies Copyright Page Contents Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgments Pathos and Power Widowhood in Africa: A Re-Introduction Part 1. 1. Vestiges of Widowhood on Gorée Island and in Senegambia during the Atlantic Era 2. Law and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Angola 3. Owning and Resisting: Widowhood in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Mauritanian Islamic Texts 4. Widows, “Ordinary” Men, and Levirate Disputes in the Early Colonial French Soudan, 1905–1913 Part 2. 5. Challenging Dependents/Dependence: Widows in Court in Postcolonial Ghana 6. “The City Makes and Unmakes Namwandus”: Anxieties of Widowhood in Late Twentieth-Century Kampala 7. Four Months and Ten Days: Widowhood and Womb Politics in the Nile Valley 8. A Precious Story: Writing a Young Widow’s Life from Postapartheid South Africa Part 3. 9. The Children’s Fight: Widowhood, Kin-Work, and Dispossession in Rural Sierra Leone 10. Simply Disliked by Her In-Laws: Litigating African Widowhood in Refuge and Exile 11. “Widows of the State”: Sociopolitical Belonging among Nigerian Military Widows during the Boko Haram Conflict 12. Wombs and Tombs: Widows, Houses, Sex, and Death Afterword References Contributors Index

Editorial Reviews

"A brilliant, compelling collection that forces us to rethink the predicaments and experiences of widows and, through the lens of their lives, review our assumptions and theories of gender relations, power, and property in Africa. A smart, comprehensive introduction frames this must-read, must-teach volume." —Dorothy Hodgson, editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Women's History

"A riveting account of widows' rites and rights! The statistics are staggering and the stories undeniably authentic, yet remarkably visceral. There is no doubt, the time for an optional protocol to CEDAW to end all forms of violence against widows is yesterday." —Eleanor Nwadinobi, president of the Widows Development Organisation and the Medical Women’s International Association

From the Publisher