- Title Information
- Title
- Romantic Desires and Polygynous Intentions: Islam, Gender, and Divorce in coastal Tanzania
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Keefe, Sue L
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- creator
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
- 2010
- Physical Description
- Extent
- xiii, 298 p.
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Note
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2010)
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Hollos, Marida
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Townswend, Nicholas
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Smith, Daniel
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Stiles, Erin
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. Anthropology
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Abstract
- This dissertation enriches our understanding of gender and religion in the African Muslim world. I illuminate this intertwining of gender and religion by investigating how Swahili women and men navigate the processes of marriage and divorce and address their gender specific needs, concerns, and aspirations in a Tanzanian coastal community, Peponi. Inspired by recent studies on the personal experience of Muslim women I particularize Swahili women and men's understanding of Islam as it relates to their marital choices and divorce experiences. Swahili marriage has long been characterized by serial monogamy, men's aspirations for polygyny, and high levels of divorce. Despite all this, marriage remains the most valued institution among Swahili Muslims. Islam forms an essential axis on which everyday activities, communications, and transactions in Peponi turn. For the Swahili, marriage and religion are intricately linked, for they see marriage as a moral institution that reflects Muslim values. While this might be an ideal Swahili people aspire to, it does not adequately describe marital life in practice. Men and women have dramatically different, gendered, expectations of their life course in terms of relationships and they invoke different discourses when discussing their expectations of marriage. The multiple meanings surrounding the practices and interpretations of Islam as well as those surrounding modern African love are vital to understanding the ties between women and men's motivations, values, and goals associated with these demographic processes. The general assumption is that men have all the power within marriage, but by listening to individual men, women, and couples I gained a more substantial insight into the gendered role and experience of Islam in analyzing the processes of marriage and divorce. I conclude that women navigate marriage and divorce in ways that challenge the assumed privilege that Muslim men have, with more ease and agency than previously imagined. I find that Swahili women have new opportunities today and this has a tremendous impact on women's independence and choice to delay (re)marriage, sometimes indefinitely.
- Subject
- Topic
- Gender
- Subject
- Topic
- Swahili
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1114160")
- Topic
- Sex
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/979776")
- Topic
- Islam
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1010443")
- Topic
- Marriage
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/895809")
- Topic
- Divorce
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1737805")
- Topic
- Polygyny
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1210143")
- Geographic
- Tanzania
- Record Information
- Record Content Source (marcorg)
- RPB
- Record Creation Date
(encoding="iso8601")
- 20111003
- Language
- Language Term:
Code (ISO639-2B)
- eng
- Language Term:
Text
- English
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.7301/Z09C6VNS
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- Collection is open for research.
- Type of Resource (primo)
- dissertations