Wordy Women: Gender Trouble and the Oral Politics of the East African Revival in Northern Gikuyuland

Abstract

 : This essay explores conversion to the East African Revival as a way that Gikuyu women and men argued about moral and economic change. Rural capitalism in the s and s attacked the material basis of Gikuyu gender order by denying some men land. Familial stability was at stake in class formation : landless laborers could scarcely be respectable husbands. Rural elders and revivalists offered contending answers to the terrifying problem of gender trouble. Literate male elders at Tumutumu Presbyterian church used customary law and church bureaucracy to discipline young men and women. Revivalists, many of them women, talked : they confessed private sins vocally, cleansing themselves of sorcerous familial strife. Tumutumu's debate over Revival played out as a contest between the oral politics of conversion and the bureaucratic power of church elders. Mau Mau continued the debate.

Globalization and Socio-Cultural Processes in Contemporary Africa

“…See Karlstr ö m 2004, Hanson 2003 for discussions of "moral crisis" in the colonial period. See also various studies of the East African Revival, whose participants saw themselves as advocates for a more morally authentic Christianity, critical of mainline churches and their leaders who, revivalists argued, had become extensions of a colonial bureaucracy (Peterson 2001;Ward 1989). Both sets of debates were framed around the redefinition of moral behavior within varying constructs of both "modern" and "traditional" identity.…”

‘You May Bind Me, You May Beat Me, You May Even Kill Me’: Bridewealth, Consent and Conversion in Nineteenth-Century Abẹ́òkúta (in Present-day Southwest Nigeria)

“…The prevalent argument suggests that imperialism, and its corresponding economic effects, led to astronomical increases in the cost of bridewealth, effectively reducing, and in some cases eliminating altogether, the ability of young men to contract marriage unions. 8 Rachel Jean-Baptiste argues that colonialism directly influenced bride price amongst the Mpongwe ethnic group in colonial Gabon. She writes that bridewealth which had, previous to colonisation, consisted of the groom's family remitting iron for a bride, by 1955 included the payment of 15000 -20000 francs in cash in addition to goods such as 'liquor, guns, ammunition, knives, tobacco, china, cutlery, and European clothing valued at hundreds of francs'.…”

Historical Memory and Expanding Social Networks of Mennonite Mission School Women, Mara Region, Tanzania, 1938 to the Present

“…Women were much more eager than men to 'walk in the light', which in the revival meant telling everything openly. As elsewhere in East Africa, the revival gave women an outlet for voicing concerns that was legitimated by the church (Peterson 2001).…”