Anne M. 0. Griffiths, In Shadow of Marage. Gender and Justice in an African Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Pp. ix + 310. $50.00 cloth; $18.95 paper. Anne Griffiths's fascinating and meticulous book, In Shadow of Marriage, brings reader into Bakwena society in Botswana for an examination of the relations between justice, as represented by law, and women's experiences of gendered world they inhabit (p. 1). Her extensive field research opens onto several scholarly areas of interest to law and society community, most particularly legal pluralism, postcolonial law, and gender, at same time that it draws a delicately detailed picture of justice in village of Molepole. Although all three topics are carefully interwoven in Griffiths's analysis, this review focuses on gender rather than pluralism or postcolonial law. Griffiths presents life histories and case studies, as one might expect given her deep involvement in sites of her research over a number of years (1982-89). Her finely detailed recountings of brought for resolution to hgotla1 are contextualized within larger social, economic, and political environments in which they arose and were played out. Although we do not get to know participants intimately, as we do, for example, Dirk Hartog's Abigail Bailey, we listen to voices of women and men who are parties to disputes, and we are moved by their conflicts. We care about processes and outcomes in ways that we do not in less sensitive, less respectful, less nuanced research. Turning away from legal centralism, this book makes a strong argument for a pluralist approach to postcolonial law/legal systems and processes. Griffiths's analysis of cases and circumstances surrounding them vividly demonstrates various meshings of common, customary, and living law (p. 33). The kgotla, for example, abides by no one kind of law; common law and decisions of High Court may or may not be invoked. Griffiths contributes to an unsettling process of understanding how decentered law and legal processes are in a postcolonial society and, by implication, may also be in First and Second World systems as well. Her research affirms need to be flexible and open to intersections, overlapping, and separations of many different kinds of law and legal practices. Alongside theme of pluralism is that of gender, which I found myself most drawn to think about in part because of my own interests in feminism but also because harsh gendering of this society and its legal processes is riveting. Griffiths's descriptions of kgotla as male space are compelling (p. 117). Women are present during talkings there but rarely participate unless specifically addressed by a man. Women are often excluded from more formal legal domain as well (p. 229); they must rely on male family members to have their to property or compensation fully heard. Women do not thoroughly press their (e.g., to cattle accumulated during a marriage) for fear they will receive nothing if they do. Women cannot blame male partners for their affairs with other women-that would not be womanly. The good wife accepts her husband's infidelities so long as he provides for her and their children. Gender cuts across race and class (p. 234)-the woman, regardless of other factors, is always, or almost always, found to be at fault (p. 168). There is a consensus in society that women consistently get less than man in legal disputes (p. 170). Griffiths argues that gender hegemony is not as seamless as it might appear; there is resistance among women to male dominance. Women share, to some degree, in power of individuals to construct a discourse that will effectively represent their claims (p. 181). One unusual instance of a woman's claim to property is dispute between Goitsemang and her brother, David, over control of their natal household (p. …
Read full abstract
Oct 1, 2010
Roona Simpson 
Open Access
