Signe Arnfred

Sex, Food and Female Power: Discussion of Data Material From Northern Mozambique

Issues of sex and food are often inscribed in male/female relationships. Frequently in a western context sex is perceived as a site of male power and female subordination, while food and cooking are seen as female domains, but still sites of subordination, as elements of womens household chores. In this article, looking at issues of sex and food in a rural matrilineal setting, power aspects of male/female relationships as mediated through sex and food emerge somewhat differently. Sexual proficiency is here a womans art, mastered by old women and transmitted to the young. Also, in a setting where daily life is largely based on subsistence production, food and cooking become domains of power, again with old women in control. Based on fieldwork in northern Mozambique and with reference to African feminist conceptualizations of male/female power relationships, the article makes a case for rurality and ‘tradition’ not necessarily being adverse to female power in social relationships.

Introduction: Sex a Politics—Case Africa

“The private is political”, the legendary slogan of the 1970s women’s movement, still informs feminist research on sexualities in a profound way. Neither has Michel Foucault’s (1978/1980) call lost its urgency: he pointed at the importance of studying sexuality, desires, and norms not as outcomes of repression but as constitutive forces generating relations of power. Research should ask how sexualities emerge through the workings of power, often seemingly private, always inherently political. Then, it is not sexuality as such we study, but power and politics, the state and the practices of subjectification (Butler 1993), also in intimate encounters. In this issue of NORA we draw from a wealth of well known feminist scholarship on sex and power but also claim that this line of inquiry can be revitalized by cross-fertilization from the research field of sexualities in Africa, another vibrant field of research that too often is seen as a separate sphere of its own. We suggest that by a focus on Africa important aspects of power in general can be theorized, in addition to empirical documentation of contemporary features of sex and politics in Africa. A strongly media-attractive rape trial against a high-level politician or some silent kisses between two young girls in an African rural boardingschool dormitory are here presented as cases of equal relevance for the study of sexualities globally. They both can inform our understanding of the political in sexualities, regardless of location. By the choice of publishing this collection of articles in NORA we do not wish to merely inform the Nordic readers on Africa, let alone urge them to “care”. Rather, we argue that investigations like these here presented can enhance theoretical thinking in the North by providing connections and contrasts that reveal our local blind spots. Studies of sexuality and politics in Africa can alert us to issues of sex and politics being interconnected in ways we might not otherwise have noticed and which, in turn, can enhance our understanding of the political in sexualities, also in the North. A more concrete reason for our presence in NORA is the centrality, high profile, and long historical roots of African-Nordic research collaboration in the field

From Female Shamans to Danish Housewives: Colonial Constructions of Gender in Greenland, 1721 to ca. 1970

Abstract Taking its inspiration from post-colonial feminist scholarship, particularly the writings of Greenland scholar Karla Jessen Williamson, this paper sets out to trace the ways in which conceptions of gender in Greenland changed as a consequence of the eighteenth-century colonial encounter with Christian missionaries and a Danish trade monopoly. According to Jessen Williamson, pre-colonial Greenlandic conceptions of gender were characterized by a certain social indifference to gender, and the absence of a given hierarchy of male dominance/female subordination—a situation of genderlessness. During the process of colonization, European morals of sexuality and hierarchies of gender were introduced, along with hierarchies of race. The paper focuses on two historical periods, the 1700s and the 1900s. We see the first period as characterized by intricate intersections of gender, race, and class, as well as transformations of existing norms of gender and sexuality. As for the second period, the paper investigates how the notion of genderlessness might provide a background for understanding the different implications of the process of modernization for different groups of women in Greenland. Our aim is to contribute to a continued discussion of different understandings of gender in Greenland and elsewhere.

Investigating gender in the Greenland process of modernization

Abstract The Greenland process of modernization, which has been going on for more than 200 years, but with particular intensity since the 1950s, has affected the lives and identities of women and men differently. Gender identities are seen as culturally and socially constructed, and it is argued that cultural influences (especially from Denmark) and changing social structures (the emergence of an elite) have been decisive in various ways at different points in time for shaping gender identities and relations in Greenland today. Focal points of the analysis are the emerging Greenland nationalism at the turn of the century, the influx of Danish males in the period of intensive modernization, and the present situation with a majority of women in education and white‐collar jobs, and a majority of male modem misfits.

Heterosexuality in Africa

Ways of understanding sexuality in Africa have deep colonial roots. In classical anthropology – itself an aspect of colonialism – ‘African sexuality’ was studied as an aspect of marriage, family, and kinship. With the onset of the HIV/AIDS pandemic sexuality in itself emerged as a field of study, however, closely linked to risk, disease, and danger. Critical of these assumptions, postcolonial scholarship has introduced broader approaches to studies of sexuality. These approaches include a new focus on sexual pleasure as part of ‘being African the modern way,’ for men as well as for women.