Claiming Civic Virtue

Download or read book Claiming Civic Virtue written by Jan Bender Shetler and published by University of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among communities in the Mara region of Tanzania, it is considered men’s responsibility to maintain “history.” But when Jan Bender Shetler’s questions turned to specific familial connections within the village, she discovered her male informants had to occasionally leave the room—to ask their wives for clarification. The result is an original and wide-ranging investigation of the gendered nature of historical memory and its influence on the development of the region over the past 150 years. Shetler’s exploration of these oral traditions and histories opens exciting new vistas for understanding how women and men in this culture tell their stories and assert their roles as public intellectuals—with important implications for research in African and gender studies, and the history of ethnicity and nationalism.