Voices from Mutira: Changes in the Lives of Rural Gikuyo Women, 1910-1995
By:
Jean Davison
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Description:
Documenting the changes occurring since the 1984 study, this edition provides a collection of life histories from the women of Mutira. Two new introductory chapters frame the life histories within the context both of significant macro-level transitions in Kenya and current thinking on gender.
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Vividly engaging - When Jean Davidson went back to Kenya in 1994 to update her earlier fieldwork in the small village of Mutira, she found a culture in flux. Beset by seismic changes that rocked not only the village, but the entire country, the women she'd interviewed in for her earlier ethnographical work seemed to represent a magnified microcosm of Kenyan society as a whole, & deftly illustrated what can happen to a culture that experiences changes too large, and too quick. Wide arching changes in the political structure of the country & the ever encroaching effect of Western influence had created major holes in the fabric of the culture, doing away with old values & ethics, but replacing them with nothing. The culture Jean Davidson faithfully recorded in 1995 through her painstaking detailing of the life stories of seven rural Gikuyu women was a culture with no center of gravity, a culture that seemed on the verge of implosion. Focusing on a sample of seven, Davidson is able to identify socio-cultural factors which not only influenced the life courses of these seven individual women, but which also had a great & broad impact upon the lives of Kenyans in general. This masterfully wrought, deeply engaging ethnography, tracing the changes in the lives of these women through their own untutored testimony from 1905 through 1995, offers an engaging glimpse into another culture, which, at its most basic level, may not be so very different from our own.
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