Gendered Discourses and Mediated Modernities

Urban and Rural Performances of Tuareg Smith Women

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2939619
AutoresSusan J Rasmussen (autor correspondente)
Ano2003
Volume59
Fascículo4
Páginas487-509
Data de publicação2003-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Anthropological Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0091-7710 • E-ISSN: 2153-3806
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/jar.59.4.3631593
OpenAlexW1573221002
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6
Referências citadas12

The verbal art performances of Tuareg smith women--in praise songs, dance, joking, and, more recently, in media such as radio--are becoming more complex, as their messages and styles articulate with wider audiences and changing social relationships, in particular those involving gender and relations between the sexes. This essay analyzes gendered discourses in female smiths' performances, with particular emphasis on a radio narrative in Agadez, Niger, and a rural wedding praise performance in the Aïr Mountains region. As female smiths perform alongside male smiths at rural rites of passage, they mediate important concerns of not solely their noble patrons but also Tuareg women. In urban, multiethnic settings, smith women's messages and roles are changing, particularly in new technologies, such as radio, deployed by elite feminist organizations to advance their own agendas for gender and socioeconomic change. More broadly, continuities and transformations in smith women's verbal art performances provide new perspectives on cultural mediators and gendered discourses in multiple modernities

Art · Elite · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Praise · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · African Studies and Geopolitics · Gender Studies · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis