Abstract
Since the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–1985) gender-based violence (GBV) has increasingly received global attention and eventuated in the earmarking of June 23rd, 2011 as the first-ever In ...
Highlights
Social hierarchies between men and women are symbolically maintained through social practices
This paper examines the constellation of beliefs informing the continuous support for traumatic widowhood rites and practices (WRP) among Balengou women even in the face of modernity and Christianity
The continuous saliency of these WRP, we maintain, suggests that this concatenation of social customs is entangled in the double process of disavowal and projection (Gilman, 1989)
Summary
Social hierarchies between men and women are symbolically maintained through social practices. Older widows reproduce WRP while new widows internalize and assimilate these practices into their habitus as a sign of identification with the former It involves processes of alienation and exclusion as well as the conflicting aspirations for belonging and inclusion. Subjection to WRP is simultaneously a manifestation of “false consciousness” (Eisenstein, 1983; Gorelick, 1991; Mackinnon, 1982) and a “patriarchal bargain” (Bourdieu, 1985; Foucault, 1977; Kandiyoti, 1988) This is because women are “capital bearing objects” whose value accrues to the primary groups to which they belong through marriage or birth (Lovell, 2000). We make some suggestions towards the achievement of social justice for women
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