Premium
Within the Tent and at the Crossroads: Travel and Gender Identity among the Tuareg of Niger
Author(s) -
Rasmussen Susan J.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1525/eth.1998.26.2.153
Subject(s) - ambivalence , gender studies , narrative , power (physics) , hegemony , identity (music) , conversation , sociology , perspective (graphical) , tourism , gender relations , aesthetics , political science , social psychology , psychology , art , law , literature , communication , quantum mechanics , politics , visual arts , physics
This essay examines the shaping of gender relations in travel among the seminomadic Tuareg in the Niger Republic. Expressive forms including narrative, conversation, poetry, and song articulate ambivalence toward changing travel practices in a society based on movement, and afundamental preoccupation with inside, outside, and the borders that separate them. Men's and women's travel experiences undermine existing institutions, consequently enmeshing gender identity in new power relations in other domains. These Tuareg data challenge some tendencies of transnational theory to elevate the transcultural to the universal, and offer a perspective on the interaction between gender and forms of hegemony.