States of marriage : gender, justice, and rights in colonial Mali / Emily S. Burrill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Burrill, Emily, author.

Series:

New African histories series

New African histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marriage--Mali--History--20th century.

Marriage.

Marriage--Political aspects--Mali--History--20th century.

Marriage law--Mali--History--20th century.

Marriage law.

Women's rights--Mali--History--20th century.

Women's rights.

Colonial influence.

Social conditions.

History.

Mali--Social conditions--20th century.

Mali.

Mali--Colonial influence.

Physical Description:

xiv, 239 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, [2015]

Summary:

In States of Marriage, Emily S. Burrill shines new light on the history of marriage as a social and legal institution in colonial Africa. Taking the French Sudan (present-day Mali) as her case study, Burrill contends that marriage was an essential tool for articulating and consolidating colonial power. In French Sudan as elsewhere in Africa, marriage reform began with efforts to codily subjects' marriages, bridewealth transfers, and divorce proceedings in public records rendering these social arrangements "legible" to the colonial administration, from which more forceful interventions to control and reframe marriage and its participants followed. Burrill draw on an impressive range of sources, including previously classified court documents, to show not only how marriage as an institution functioned within the colonial ecosystem but how ordinary men and women had to negotiate the shifting terrain of conjugal rights and responsibilities in their daily lives. In particular, Burrill successfully excavates the voices of women from colonial court records, making this work a landmark for legal and gender studies. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: States of marriage in colonial West Africa

Locating gendered knowledge and authority in Sikasso at the turn of the century

Contesting slavery and marriage in early colonial Sikasso

Returned soldiers and runaway wives : defining the African family in the French Sudan, 1912/30

Wealth in women, wealth in men : the global depression of the 1930s, competing labor obligations, and the Mandel Decree

Defining the limits and bargains of patriarchy : narratives of domestic violence

Gender justice and the marriage legibility projects of late colonial French Sudan

Conclusion: "There are always laws that are not practiced".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-232) and index.

ISBN:

9780821421444

0821421441

9780821421451

082142145X

OCLC:

895302222