Contemporary Gender and Sexuality in Africa

"This co-edited volume is an important contribution to the growing archive of ethnography-based academic publications about the diverse cultures of gender and sexuality in Africa. Destabilising the norm of predominantly Western scholars studying the African Other, this book brings together Japanese and African scholars. It is a catalogue of Othered or exoticised customary practices in today’s Africa: female genital cutting, infibulation, polygyny, ghost marriages, woman-to-woman marriage, levirate unions, unmarried mothers, forehead scarifications, and the weaponising of rape. Important methodological challenges are explored, including the safety of ethnographers during political conflict, the effects of researchers’ gender and sexuality on access to sensitive data, and the emotional difficulty of collecting data from victims of sexual violence."

"This exceptionally important edited volume deals with various current phenomena that address modern ‘problems’ related to gender and sexuality in Africa based on 11 authors’ ethnographic research. The African–Japanese collaborative work is itself worthy of high praise, as such work is not sufficiently recognised. Even more importantly, the volume provides a rich description of current Africa’s culture in relation to gender and sexuality from which non-African societies can learn."

"This welcome volume is distinctive in its self-proclaimed “African-Japanese Approach” to the issue of sexuality and gender in modern Africa. It is in fact a triangular critique involving African and Japanese contributors and western scholarship. The contributors discuss through case studies such ‘traditional’ topics as polygyny, woman-to-woman marriage, patriarchy, pre-marital pregnancy and how these nowadays relate to contemporary LGBTI issues, homophobia, female sexual violence, new definitions of women’s status and masculinity, and care of the aged."