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“To put men in a bottle”: Eroticism, kinship, female power, and transactional sex in Maputo, Mozambique
Author(s) -
GROESGREEN CHRISTIAN
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12008
Subject(s) - kinship , eroticism , transactional sex , gender studies , reciprocity (cultural anthropology) , power (physics) , sociology , white (mutation) , human sexuality , psychology , demography , social psychology , anthropology , population , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , quantum mechanics , research methodology , gene
Eroticism, kinship, and gender all intersect in transactional sexual relationships between young women known as curtidoras and older white men in Maputo, Mozambique. I draw on postcolonial feminism to argue that curtidoras’ erotic powers are a central part of sexual–economic exchanges with men and that senior female kin are deeply involved in processes of seduction and extraction of money. I conceptualize relationships between curtidoras, female kin, and male partners as “gendered triads of reciprocity” to unsettle Western stereotypes of female victims and patriarchal structures in Africa. Transactional sex often makes the partners mutually dependent and emotionally vulnerable, and, although moralities of exchange collide, young women tend to redistribute accumulated money from men among female seniors and kin.