By 2020, the absolute numbers of elderly in Africa will increase dramatically. A majority of these will be women. While we know much about the powers and authority of male elders within formal kin- and age-based structures, we know little about the lived experience of aging in Africa today, and even less about the formal and informal roles of elderly women. These ethnographic descriptions of gendered aging experiences in seven African societies examine the following little explored topics: indigenous conceptions of gender and aging; the ambiguities in women's social positions; changing family, household and marital relationships, which affect experiences of old age; older persons' access to and control over material, human and suprahuman resources; and the interplay of indigenous and modern forces. They point to future research challenges that will include understanding indigenous notions of gender and aging, and power and personhood, as they relate to personal experiences and to the ability of older women and men to assure their security in contexts of rapid social change.
Among the Giriama of Kenya, post-menopausal women are custodians of the central, ritual objects of a female cult that is believed to enable reproductive health. By asking why cult custodians must be women and must be post-menopausal, this paper explores cultural constructions of gender, aging, health, and power. The solution to the paradox of how post-fertile women enable fertility illustrates the salience of ethnomedical beliefs for informing explorations into conceptions of gender and the life course. It can also shed light upon variations in involvement of women and men as ritual specialists in non-western societies.
This article details obstacles to deterrence of the global trade in non-Western cultural properties and examines the ethics of Western collecting and curating of such property. We focus on the theft and global marketing of memorial statues (vigango) erected by the Mijikenda peoples of East Africa, relating an unusually well-documented case study, tracing two statues from their theft to their appearance in U.S. museums. We describe the large-scale extraction of such statues from Kenya and its impact on the Mijikenda, their quantity and distribution in U.S. museums, and local deterrence efforts. We call for greater activism by Western museum staffs, anthropologists, and other scholars to curb the trade in non-Western cultural properties. We recommend (1) tightening legal loopholes, (2) strengthening observance of international agreements and the U.S. and international museums' codes of ethics, (3) stepping up field efforts to deter theft, and (4) educating the public about this growing trade. [Keywords: East Africa, Mijikenda peoples, international trade in African cultural property, museum ethics] Art was invented simultaneously with collecting, and the two are inconceivable without each other. -Shelley Errington AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 105(3):566-580,
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