Nandera E Mhando
Supervisors: Frances Pine; Nici Nelson
Research Project
‘The Need for Wives and the Hunger for Children: Marriage, Gender and Livelihood among the Kuria of Tanzania’
My study focuses on what is on the surface a deeply patriarchal society, the Kuria, very typical of patrilineal, cattle-owning, lineage-based East Africa. Although little agency is overtly ascribed to women, I demonstrate how some women and disadvantaged men manage to overcome the constraints in their lives either by utilising the existing structures of marriage to their advantage or else by engaging in entrepreneurial activities, alone or with others, to improve their economic situations. I show how the various forms of marriage help individuals to achieve full personhood in Kuria terms. I explain why people want to have so many children and how they are able to overcome infertility and even death to increase the number of their descendants. I position my study against the backdrop of Kuria unions and take an historical perspective. I look at the ways these unions are tied into and shaped by wider social structures, including the laws and ideologies of Christianity, Islam, and the state in its various forms. I concentrate more on local meanings than on legal or political rules.
Selected publications
Forthcoming: ‘Personhood and Agency in Kuria Traditional Marriages’, 4th European Conference on African Studies, the Nordic African Institute, 15-18 June 2011.
(2010) ‘The Need for Wives and the Hunger for Children: Dealing with Choices and Constrains in Kuria Marriages’, Anthropology Seminar, Goldsmiths, University of London, 8 December, 2010.
(2006) 'Tanzania African Media Development Initiatives', a report co-authored with John Muthee Jones, BBC World Service Trust.org.
(2005) 'Woman-Marriage among Kuria of Northern Tanzania', presented in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
(2002) 'Resources Shared in the East African Community', presented in the Women Journalist Conference, The East African Community.