PALRIWALA, Rajni and Carla RISSEEUW, eds., SHIFTING CIRCLES OF SUPPORT: Contextualizing Kinship and Gender in South Asia and Sub- Saharan Africa

Abstract

PALRIWALA, Rajni and Carla RISSEEUW, eds., SHIFTING CIRCLES OF SUPPORT: Contextualizing Kinship and Gender in South Asia, and Sub- Saharan Africa. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press (A Division of Sage Publications, Inc.), 1996, 343 pp., $34.95 hardcover. One of the propitious recent trend in the studies of gender and kinship is the dramatic surge in the number and quality of research projects carried out in various parts of the world. This new momentum supported by various local, national and international organizations has further accentuated better communication among scholars associated with disparate intellectual orientations, ideologies and national identities. This book consists of eleven articles from five nations all from regions of South Asia and Africa represented by Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Northwest and South India, including Lakshadweep on the southwest coast of India, and Sri Lanka. Only ten of the twenty five papers form the basis of this book which were presented at the conference on State and Market Influences on Gender, Family and Kinship Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Incidentally, the book does not include any articles on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal or any other smaller nations. The book is divided into three sections. The first section focuses on colonial legacy and its impact on marriage and kinship. Francien van Driel attributes the rising numbers of female-headed households, unmarried mothers and matrilineal households to the direct impact of colonial rule and Christianity in Botswana. She holds colonial rule responsible for the introduction of a new kind of economic system which undermined the importance of customary practices and kinship bonds. Similar consequences are reported by Dzodzi Tsikata from Southern Ghana. Following the establishment of British colonial rule in Ghana at the turn of the century, the new laws of succession gradually replaced the customary practices. The new laws gave a new significance to conjugal groups over lineage groups. In many cases, such changes threatened the viability of polygynous conjugal families and the women's rights over property. Often the new alien laws simply ignored prevalent traditions, patrilineal as well as matrilineal, dividing families and kin groups often to the detriment of women. Colonialism in South Asia, fortified by new legislation and incipient industrialization, transformed gender and kinship relationships in ways which were neither British nor South Asian in character. Carla Risseeuw describes that colonial legislation in Sri Lanka institutionalized monogamous, virilocal, patriarchy relegating women into economic dependence and devaluing their work and status. One of the subjects which has received a significant amount of attention is matriliny as practised in the southern Indian state of Kerla. K. Saradamoni points out that between the 1910s and 1930s, various legislative changes in Kerala brought in new rules of inheritance, redefining and emphasizing the place of conjugal family, virtually pulverizing the strengths of the matrilineal system. …