Gender, Justice, and the Problem of Culture

Dorothy L. Hodgson is Professor of anthropology and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs (Graduate School—New Brunswick) at Rutgers University and past President of the African Studies Association.As a historical anthropologist, she has worked in Tanzania, East Africa, for almost thirty years on such topics as gender, ethnicity, cultural politics, colonialism, nationalism, modernity, the missionary encounter, transnational organizing, and the indigenous rights movement. Her work has been supported by awards from the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, American Council for Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, American Philosophical Society, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Creating "Law": Colonial Rule, Native Courts, and the Codification of Customary Law2. Debating Marriage: National Law and the Culture of Postcolonial Rule3. Criminalizing Culture: Human Rights, NGOs, and the Politics of Anti-FGM Campaigns4. Demanding Justice: Collective Action, Moral Authority, and Female Forms of PowerConclusionBibliographyIndex

" Gender, Justice, and the Problem of Culture speaks to a wide range of disciplines and should find pride of place in our curricula."—African Studies Review" Gender, Justice, and the Problem of Culture makes a significant contribution to the study of law in East Africa and elsewhere among colonized peoples, and it should be required reading not only for academics interested in such matters but for activists and policymakers."—American Anthropologist"Hodgson's book is both rich in detail and broad in its implications for understanding struggles for justice for marginalised groups. It deserves the attention of students and scholars of African studies, anthropology, history, political science and women's and gender studies."—Journal of Modern African Studies"[T]this book [is] an excellent addition to scholarship and courses on gender, human rights, legal anthropology, critical development studies, and more."—American Ethnologist"Dorothy Hodgson asks a number of important and clearly articulated questions, and provides thoughtful answers to them using a hybrid of historical and anthropological methodologies that combine in-depth case studies with more empirically-informed macro-level reflection. A concise and useful resource in the undergraduate as well as the graduate classroom."—Priya Lal, author of African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World"This is a book that only Dorothy Hodgson could have written, with her decades of work in Tanzania, vast networks in Maasailand, and deep ethnographic knowledge, combined with her deftness in working through more theoretical work on gender and human rights. Closely argued, conceptually sharp, and engagingly written."—Brett Shadle, author of Girl Cases: Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya, 1890-1970