Devotion and Domesticity: The Reconfiguration of Gender in Popular Christian Pamphlets from Ghana and Nigeria

Newell, Stephanie

doi:10.1163/1570066054782324

Cited by 23 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Interestingly, among the Akan, children born to a woman in or out of wedlock ultimately belong to their mother's lineage. However, in the case where the man fails to marry her, her value in the marriage market may reduce, as she might not be the first choice for men looking for prospective wives (Newell, 2005). This argument is consistent with the fact that most female participants tended to think of marriage as a necessary end to their unions, since, going by the kwasiabuo logic, they are being treated as fools by their partners.…”

Section: Pressures From the Familymentioning

confidence: 55%

Cohabitation and Its Consequences in Ghana

Obeng-Hinneh

Kpoor

2021

Journal of Family Issues

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Although largely considered an unconventional form of domestic partnership, cohabitation is a growing phenomenon in Ghana. The lived experiences of cohabiting couples have, however, received little scholarly attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted with cohabiting couples in Accra, Ghana, this study focuses on the implications of cohabitation on cohabitees. The data showed that cohabitees often face pressures from their families, churches, friends, and neighbors to either convert their unions to marriage or end the relationships. The relationships are also characterized by intimate partner violence and poor relationship quality. Women, more than men, tend to suffer these consequences of cohabitation. The study’s general conclusion is that the implications of cohabitation are mostly negative, and the gendered nature of the experiences reflects the sociocultural landscape of the Ghanaian society and how men and women are viewed differently in terms of their marital status.

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Section: Pressures From the Familymentioning

confidence: 55%

Cohabitation and Its Consequences in Ghana

Obeng-Hinneh

Kpoor

2021

Journal of Family Issues

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“…Indeed, sport managers sometimes select young Pentecostals for trials overseas over other footballers with superior skills. The managers, who are not necessarily Pentecostal themselves, recognize that the kind of masculinity that Pentecostal teachings promote, away from alcohol, gambling, nightlife, and promiscuity (Newell 2005: 310; Pfeiffer, Gimbel-Sherr, and Augusto 2007: 696; Pype 2012), resembles the disciplining regimes that football clubs demand of young recruits. In both Pentecostalism and football, the body figures prominently in disciplining regimes.…”

Section: “Useless Men” and Pentecostal Morality In Cameroonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Masculinity in the Neoliberal Order: Cameroonian Footballers, Fijian Rugby Players, and Senegalese Wrestlers

et al. 2018

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In the Global South since the 1980s, when economic downturns under pressure from the forces of neoliberalism eroded social relations, sport and athletes’ bodies have become major loci where masculinity is constituted and debated. Sport masculinity now fills a vacuum left by the evacuation of traditional forms of masculinity, which are no longer available to the new generations of men. For them, the possibility of employment in the sport industries in the Global North has had a transformative effect, despite the extremely limited probability of success. During the same period of time, the world of sport has become commoditized, mediatized, and corporatized, transformations that have been spearheaded by the growing importance of privatized media interests. Professional athletes have become neoliberal subjects responsible for their own destiny in an increasingly demanding and unpredictable labor market. In Cameroon, Fiji, and Senegal, athletic hopefuls prospectively embody this new gendered subjectivity by mobilizing locally available instruments that most closely resemble neoliberal subjectivity, such as Pentecostalism and maraboutism. Through the conduit of sport, the masculine self has been transformed into a neoliberal subject in locations where this is least expected. What emerges is a new approach to masculinity that eschews explanations based on the simple recognition of diverse and hierarchically organized masculinities, and instead recognizes masculinity in its different manifestations as embedded, scalar, relational, and temporally situated.

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“…Though it would require more textual space than is available here to explore it in detail, it may be supposed that this belief in the transparency and power of poetic language can be traced to other poetic and literary forms and contexts in Nigeria. One example of how this belief manifests itself is the fact that readers of religious pamphlets argued in interviews that Stephanie Newell made in Nigeria and Ghana that the text is or can be the 'Word of God' channelled through the pen of a writer (Newell 2005(Newell , 2007. The ability of Yorùbá oral poetry to form audiences and therefore also social collectives that Karin Barber has described is an example of the way in which secular poetry's actual power to shape and transform has played and still plays a role in Nigerian communities (1997).…”

Section: The Imperative Mode and Linguistic Transparencymentioning

confidence: 99%

OkadaBooks and the Poetics of Uplift

Hållén¹

2018

English Studies in Africa

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This article studies collections of inspirational poetry published on the Nigerian online platform and app, OkadaBooks. OkadaBooks lets users upload and access ebooks for free or at a low cost. Nigerian inspirational poetry can be seen as a hybrid poetic form that borrows from motivational speaking, self-help and religious pamphlet literature. The collections are marketed to readers as works of literature that through their literary qualities and poetic language can inspire the reader to create a better future for him-or herself. The main argument in the article is that the poetic and rhetorical devices that are used in this literature, which I propose to call the poetics of uplift, can be read as instrumental in the commodification of the text. The poets foreground the relevance and value of their texts through the different ways in which they promulgate a view of poetic language as having the power to change people's futures for the better. The article looks specifically at how poets use literary devices such as the use of the pronoun 'you' and the imperative grammatical mode to speak directly to the reader and further considers how these poems explicitly celebrate language and the very concept of poetry.

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Devotion and Domesticity: The Reconfiguration of Gender in Popular Christian Pamphlets from Ghana and Nigeria

Cited by 23 publications

References 11 publications

Cohabitation and Its Consequences in Ghana

Cohabitation and Its Consequences in Ghana

Rethinking Masculinity in the Neoliberal Order: Cameroonian Footballers, Fijian Rugby Players, and Senegalese Wrestlers

OkadaBooks and the Poetics of Uplift

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