Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gender, Power and Performance in Urban Senegal

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This research will investigate the changing gender and power relations occurring among urban Senegalese Muslim women by systematically analyzing ritual and non-ritual dance performances in Wolof-speaking communities in Dakar. The project, to be conducted by a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Rutgers University, compares two dance events (tours and sabars) with "ritual" dances (baptisms and marriages) based upon informal and semi-structured interviews of performers and observers, oral histories, methodic coding of videotaped danced events, participant observation, and archival data. In a society where men's roles and activities typically overshadow those of women, performance provides a socially sanctioned context in which women may affect the constraints of social differences based on gender, age and caste. The investigator of this project hypothesizes that women's tour associations (neighborhood dance groups) are innovative forms of community building in response to widespread urbanization and social change. Testing this hypothesis and studying the functioning of this mode of social networking will contribute to theories on social transformation as well as those on gender dynamics. Of broader significance is the proposal's focus on an activity central to women's strategies to build solidarity and change gender and power relations. Understanding this process is a valuable contribution to the widely acknowledged need for a more comprehensive knowledge of the variations in Muslim cultures and of the ways by which women negotiate their roles in these cultures.