Gender Relations and the Transformation of the Northern Somali Pastoral Tradition

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. This paper deals with the role of the ideology of kinship in precapitalist,1 northern, pastoral Somali society and the demise of this ideology as a result of the social transformations wrought by commercial capital and the colonial state. Gaining an understanding of the history of gender relations is a central objective of this essay; it is pursued by analyzing gender inequality in the context of other relationships of inequality such as those based on age and class. It is one of the insights of recent women's history that locating gender in the precapitalist social formation and analysing the impact on gender of capitalist transformation are indispensable to an understanding of present-day gender relations.2 This paper focuses on the first two themes; the latter will be the burden of another effort. One of the emotionally charged exchanges of my fleldwork in Djibouti in1989 was the one in which young, urban, working women angrily attacked me for studying women's roles in traditional society and culture (hiddiyo dhaqan).3 While most Somalis, men and women, find pride and reassurance in the wisdom and beauty of their oral literature, these women regard both it and those who glorify it as obstacles to their efforts to gain increased autonomy in their relations with men.4 4In using "autonomy," I follow Karin Willemse, "De Fur in Soedan: Autonomie en de vrouwen in Jabel Marra," De Derde Wereld, 8, 4 (January 1990), 31. Autonomy thus does not This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 21:40:11 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 242 LIDWIEN KAPTEIJNS For them, hiddiyo dhaqan constitutes an ideological bludgeon, wielded by both men and women to deprive them of the fruits of their considerable social and economic contributions to the day-to-day survival of their nuclear and extendedfamilies. In their view, this ideological weapon is rarely used to shield them from harsh political and socioeconomic realities but is readily brought out to restrict their social freedom or economic choices. It is therefore the objective of this paper to contribute to the reconquest of the past by and for Somali women and men. Analyzing the continuities and discontinuities between the past and the present is neither a dispassionate nor an irrelevant exercise. Nor does it prescribe the choices Somali women and men will make as they reproduce and transform their society in the crucibles of their war-tom homeland or life in exile.The processes that made Somali pastoral so...

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