Hidden in the Household

Gender and Class in the Study of Islam in Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID2140355
AuthorsE Ann Mcdougall (corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume42
Issue2-3
Pages508-545
Publication date2008-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-3968 • E-ISSN: 1923-3051
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00083968.2008.10751395
OpenAlexW1584145372
LanguageEN
Citations received3

The household, if understood in a dynamic multi-status, multi-generational, multi-cultural, “gendered” way, can provide a conceptual framework for reinterpreting practices, processes, and patterns of Islamization in Africa. This framework contrasts with the one privileged in literature that focuses on the agency of traders, clerics and chiefs in public institutions. It reminds us that they “lived Islam” next to their mothers, wives, sisters, and slaves in households. This preliminary exploration of women and slaves usually seen as marginal to Islamization is intended to challenge extant perceptions: women and slaves were not only “recipients” of Islam but its agents. In their households, they shaped how Islam was lived by all around them. So instead of looking only at the history of more public Islamic people and places, addressing attention to the household and its changing nature over time may allow us to see a different face of Islam and different process of Islamization

Agency (philosophy) · Archaeology · Conceptual framework · Extant taxon · Face (sociological concept) · Islam · Islamization · Perception · Political science · Social science · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Psychology

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