Arenas for Control, terrains of Gender Contestation: Guerilla Struggle and Counter-Insurgency Warfare in Zimbabwe, 1972-1980

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	Arenas for Control, terrains of Gender Contestation: Guerilla Struggle and Counter-Insurgency Warfare in Zimbabwe, 1972-1980
Author:	Kesby, Mike
Year:	1996
Periodical:	Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:	22
Issue:	4
Period:	December
Pages:	561-584
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Zimbabwe
Subjects:	gender relations national liberation struggles women Women's Issues Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) nationalism Military, Defense and Arms Cultural Roles Historical/Biographical Sex Roles
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637157
Abstract:	This paper examines the contingent nature of wartime developments in gender relations in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), focusing particularly on the experience of protected village inmates in Chiweshe, one of the first areas to be forcibly villagized during the liberation war of the 1970s. The paper highlights the spatial dimensions of wartime contingency at the national and local level and analyses how the enforced restructuring of rural communities destabilized the spatial discourses and practices that 'normally' structure gender identities and relations. One of the consequences of population concentration was the destabilization of rural patriarchal power, opening up new spaces of opportunity for junior men. Rural women found themselves in a context structured by the titanic clash between senior and junior men, and exploited the opportunities that these struggles offered. Notes, ref., sum.