Pathos and Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present

The collected essays in Pathos and Power provide a critical exploration of widowhood in Africa through a series of historical and contemporary case studies. The book challenges a simplistic understanding of widowhood by highlighting how the experience varies according to age, class, race, religion, and geographic location. The contributors investigate how the category of widowhood can obscure or reveal various social dynamics while demonstrating the diversity of material, symbolic, and embodied circumstances faced by African widows. The volume considers the forces shaping the lives of widows by examining the structural and legal challenges they encounter, including discriminatory practices in social, economic, and political spheres. Through discussions of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts, it explores the intersections of custom, law, patriarchy, and feminism while delving into the potentially liberatory opportunities that widowhood sometimes presents. The book also raises broader questions about gender, personhood, marriage, autonomy, and national identity, emphasizing how widowhood informs key conceptual debates in African studies. Editors Joanna Davidson and Benjamin N. Lawrance bring together scholars across such fields as anthropology, gender studies, history, law, and political science. The authors employ a range of methodologies, including archival research, ethnography, and storytelling, to illuminate widowhood in new and innovative ways. The volume’s rich empirical studies and theoretical insights offer a valuable resource for scholars seeking to understand widowhood and its broader implications in African societies. CONTRIBUTORS Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf Fisayo Ajala Catherine E. Bolten Abbass Braham Mariana Candido Joanna Davidson Mariana Dias Paes Ramadan El-Khouli Casey Golomski Juelma Gomes de Matos Ngãla Benjamin N. Lawrance Kenda Mutongi Richard L. Roberts Enid Schildkrout Kate Skinner Wallace Teska Benjamin Twagira Sarah J. Zimmerman

Benjamin N. Lawrance is a professor of history and, by courtesy, law at the University of Arizona, where he teaches courses in history and law about Africa, slavery, migration, refugees, and asylum. He has published twenty books, including Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling. He is the emeritus editor in chief of the African Studies Review.

Joanna Davidson is an associate professor of anthropology at Boston University. She is the author of Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa; a coeditor of Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World; and the author of articles in journals such as American Ethnologist and the African Studies Review.