Of Biases and Queens
The Shi Past Through an Androgynous Looking Glass
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12002995 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elinor Sosne (Hollins University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1979 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Pages | 225-252 |
| Publication date | 1979-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History in Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0361-5413 • E-ISSN: 1558-2744 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3171747 |
| OpenAlex | W1976256011 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 4 |
Social scientists have recently become more aware of the pervasive male bias in western scholarship, a bias firmly rooted in European cultures and their offshoots. Deriving from this bias are theories which, by assuming a male-centered universe, nurtured generations of male scholars who rarely questioned their sufficiency. Although we are beginning to understand and correct for western androcentrism, we have not yet studied how African societies, especially patrilineal ones, perpetuate their own male-centered worldview in their oral traditions. Thus we have not begun to examine how distorted histories can result when African and western biases coincide and reinforce each other as androcentric researchers collect and then analyze materials which androcentric Africans consider “historical.” By analyzing data from the Shi kingdom of Ngweshe in eastern Zaire, this paper addresses the linked problems of African and western bias. It argues that -- contrary to the Shi conception of politics as a series of on-going contests and formal structural relationships between royal men, a view I shared while in the field -- one cannot begin to understand the Shi past without acknowledging the role played by non-royal women in shaping its course. More specifically, a careful reading of the data suggests that despite the cultural emphasis on patrilineal descent and the insistence that a reigning king be the biological son of his predecessor, many men who succeeded to the Ngweshe kingship were not the sons of previous monarchs; and even when they were, the selection of a king depended as much on who his mother was as on who his father might have been
Genealogy · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History · Law
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,09 |
| Citation span | 1980 - 2015 (36) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |