Tactical strangers

Mobility, trade, and gendered strangerhood in West Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID2260053
AuthorsGunvor Jónsson (0000-0003-2462-2843, Department of Sociology The Open University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume125
Issue2
Pages298-309
Publication date2023-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.13835
OpenAlexW4361007104
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited63

Mande women in West Africa unable or unwilling to conform to patriarchal gender expectations risk being evicted from social and kinship support structures. Some nonconformist women from Mali respond to this predicament by engaging intactical strangerhood: they choose to remain on the social margins, capitalizing on their situation as strangers by working as foreign traders in Dakar (Senegal). Tactical strangerhood entails only partial inclusion into patriarchal family and social structures and constitutes one of the nonconformist ways in which women in West Africa enact gender roles. Long-distance trade and travel by Mande women have led to new forms of gendered strangerhood, challenging-and potentially transforming-dominant ideologies of gender differentiation in this part of West Africa. By engaging in tactical strangerhood, women develop new forms of gendered subjectivity. Tactical strangerhood can therefore be considered an implicitly feminist and emancipatory exercise

Ideology · Immigration · Kinship · Nonconformist · Political science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Identity, and Health · Sex work and related issues

Tools

Open DOI