Singing Wives and Silent Widows: An Ethnographic Study of Marriage in West Africa

FAIN: FT-264924-19

Joanna Davidson
Boston University (Boston, MA 02215-1300)

Ethnographic research on women in rural West Africa to document and analyze the public songs of married women leading to a monograph on marriage and gendered behavior in a non-Western context.

Something is happening to marriage around the world, and although scholars have long been preoccupied with marital institutions and dynamics we are now scrambling to catch up to a plethora of new trends. My project adds novel insights to this flourishing field by focusing on the perplexing unspeakability of Jola widows in West Africa alongside the din of wives who collectively sing about their marital woes. These phenomena provide fertile ethnographic ground for re-thinking enduring humanistic concerns with the relationship between economy and affect, materiality and emotion, and instrumentality and intimacy

Associated Products

The Problem of Widows (Article)
Title: The Problem of Widows
Author: Joanna Davidson
Abstract: How does an ethnographer inquire about a social category that is neither named nor recognized as such? The Jola language has no word for widow even though more than a third of households in the Jola villages of Guinea-Bissau are occupied by women whose husbands have died. Over years of fieldwork I attempted a series of explanations to account for why widows were not named or even seen by Jola villagers. Chronicling how each of my explanations was undercut by both Jola responses and my own critical scrutiny, I expose the impasses of an ethnographic quest and show the gradual process of gaining insights into experiences that cannot be encapsulated by either local or anthropological models. The unspeakable can signal not only profound fragilities in social relations but also openings for new social formations beyond the normative bounds of received cultural categories.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15481425
Primary URL Description: American Ethnologist website
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Ethnologist
Publisher: American Ethnologist

"People Insult Me - Oh My!": Reflections on Jola Women's Story-Songs in Rural West Africa (Book Section)
Title: "People Insult Me - Oh My!": Reflections on Jola Women's Story-Songs in Rural West Africa
Author: Joanna Davidson
Editor: Tracy Ann Hayes
Editor: Theresa Edlmann
Editor: Laurinda Brown
Abstract: This book focuses on storytelling and human life by exploring the possibilities of narrative approaches across numerous disciplines and in diverse contexts; stories are humanity’s oldest way of making meaning of our past, present and future.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: http://https://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-Reflections-Narrative-Interface-Boundaries/dp/9004396411
Publisher: Brill
Book Title: Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative
ISBN: 978-9004396418

Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage Around the World (Book)
Title: Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage Around the World
Author: Multiple
Editor: Dinah Hannaford
Editor: Joanna Davdson
Abstract: Women around the world are opting out of marriage. Through nuanced ethnographic accounts of the ways that women are moving the needle on marital norms and practices, Opting Out reveals the conditions that make this widespread phenomenon possible in places where marriage has long been obligatory. Each chapter invites readers into the lives of particular women and the changing circumstances in which these lives unfold - sometimes painfully, sometimes humorously, and always unexpectedly. Taken together, the essays in this volume prompt the following questions: Why is marriage so consistently disappointing for women? When the rewards of economic stability and the social status that marriage confers are troubled, does marriage offer women anything compelling at all? Across diverse geographic contexts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this book offers sensitive and powerful portrayals of women as they escape or reshape marriage into a more rewarding arrangement.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/opting-out/9781978830103/
Primary URL Description: Rutgers University Press website
Secondary URL: https://www.amazon.com/Opting-Out-Marriage-Politics-Contexts-ebook/dp/B09X1Y5CVZ?ref_=nav_youraccount_switchacct
Secondary URL Description: Amazon website
Publisher: Ruters University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9781978830103
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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