Stella Nyanzi Medical Anthropologist, PhD from the University of London

"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."