Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society

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Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year 1989

In 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands to critical acclaim. Amadiume boldly argues that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference.

Male Daughters, Female Husbands frees the subject position of 'husband' from its affiliation with men, and examines the structures in African society that enabled people to achieve power, showing that roles were not rigidly masculinized nor feminized.

At a time when gender and queer theory are viewed by some as being stuck in an identity-politics rut, this outstanding study not only warns against the danger of projecting a very specific, Western notion of difference onto other cultures, but calls us to question the very concept of gender itself.

This new Essential Amadiume edition features a new foreword by the author in which she reflects on the historical moment at which the book was written; its initial reception; and whether anything has changed since.

Reviews

Meticulously researched... An extremely important contribution. * Africa *
Ifi Amadiume, a Nigerian sociologist, has stepped out of the academic sidelines to tackle head on the issue of racist social anthropology. * Africa Events *
Required reading in a cross-cultural women's studies course... A book well researched, clearly written, with a good bibliography, and efficiently produced one that can be depended upon to provoke lively discussion. * Choice Magazine *
Essential reading for anyone interested in fundamental thinking about the issues of gender and sex in pre-colonial societies. * Guardian, Nigeria *
Male Daughters and Female Husbands is a brilliant inspiration to open up gender theory to the originality of African philosophies of being, social life and power. Amadiume argues, from detailed evidence, that new potential emerges when we search past "suppressed and fragmented information", to find Africa's own concepts and practices of matricentricity and genderlessness, and the social history of women's movements. * Jane I Guyer, Johns Hopkins University *
Male Daughters, Female Husbands is a groundbreaking work in the study of gender in Africa. It presents a subtle, honest and clear portrait of gendered roles that upsets both the usual Western assumptions about how human societies can be organized and several propagandistic treatments of gender in Africa that have been published in the intervening years. This new edition of Amadiume's magnum opus deserves to be widely read. * Professor J. Lorand Matory, Duke University *
This is a text that should be read widely and includes women's studies, social sciences and history. It will surely be an important statement in the catalogue of anti-colonialist historiography. * West Africa *

Author Bio

Ifi Amadiume is an award-winning poet and a political activist as well as an academic. She has lived in Nigeria and the UK and is currently associate professor at Dartmouth College, USA. There, she teaches in both the Department of Religion and the African-American Studies Programme.