No abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies. the salience of Islam to the gendering of all social relations ranging from representation in myth to the organization of production. From various perspectives, none of the authors would dream of finding it possible to address "the problem of women" without redefining it as "the problem men make of women" [in my own words]. From this emerges an important theme of the book: the tension between Islam as the "solution" and Islam as the "problem" and, of course, the tension within and between Islamic and Western feminism. The book combines scholarship with gender politics, an awesome tradition which, of course, goes far beyond "women's studies." Before I engage further in these debates, let me describe in greater detail the contributions to this collection that reflect the state of current research concerning Hausa women and the diversities of gender relations in the public and the private. Part I includes papers by Balaraba Sule and Priscilla Starratt on women scholars in Kano; by Deborah Pellow on the experience of one Muslim woman brought up in Accra, whose husband had to move his family back to Kano; by Roberta Ann Dunbar comparing the policies toward women of two state-sponsored development institutions in Niger; and by Bilkisu Yusuf on Muslim women's political associations in Nigeria. Part II, "The Power of Women," contains articles by Beverly Mack on royal wives in Kano; by Allan Christelow on the emir of Kano's judicial council rulings concerning women, property, and violence in the early part of the century, and by Barbara Callaway on women in Kano city politics. Part III, "Women in the Changing Economy," includes papers by Catherine Coles on women's work in Kaduna in the 1980s and by Alan Frishman on the same theme in Kano. Part IV, "Women's Voices: Feminine Gender in Ritual, the Arts and Media," comprises articles by Nicole Echard on gender relations in bori in Ader, Niger; Connie Stephens on gender representations in the folktale tradition [tatsuniya]; by Janet Beik on women in the Nigerian theater; and by Ayesha Imam on gender ideology represented in three popular radio programs broadcast from Kaduna.This is a rich collection of papers, each of which generates further questions for research, which is one of the purposes of the book. In saying that I learned a great deal, for example, from the paper by Sule and Starratt and that I was fascinated by Mack's account of royal wives and by all the papers in Part IV is not to detract from the rest. But certainly it was ...