Remaking Law

Gender, Ethnography, and Legal Discourse

Bibliographic Data

ID4848426
AuthorsAnne Griffiths (0000-0002-1197-4180, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume35
Issue2
Pages495-509
Publication date2001-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3185411
OpenAlexW2792400042
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited62

In her book Susan Hirsch explores how Swahili Muslim women in the Kenyan coastal cities of Mombasa and Malindi pursue marital disputes in local Kadhi's (Islamic) courts. Focusing in particular on the Malindi Kadhi's court, Hirsch highlights how Muslim women actively use legal processes to transform the religious and local norms that underlie their disadvantaged position in this Swahili community in postcolonial Kenya. In her microlevel study, based on empirical work featuring court records, court observations, and participation in everyday life in the community, the author offers a nuanced analysis highlighting the ways in which women are both constrained and empowered in this setting where customary law, religious law, Western law, and social norms concerning male and female speech intersect and interact. Although constraints derived from local and religious norms operate to urge compliance with social convention that projects women as persevering wives who should suffer in silence in relation to their pronouncing husbands, some women are, nonetheless, able to negotiate these stereotypes to circumvent male power. Hirsch's study details the process whereby some Muslim women who resist patriarchal norms are silenced while others succeed in transforming the perception of womanhood to their advantage in their disputes with their husbands

Islam · Political science · Sociology · Theology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · Philosophy

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