Iris Berger - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Iris Berger

South Africa in World History

Just as South Africa was intensifying racial exploitation in the late 1940s and 1950s, other coun... more Just as South Africa was intensifying racial exploitation in the late 1940s and 1950s, other countries throughout the world were successfully casting off the chains of colonialism and racial domination. During the mid-1950s, when D. F. Malan and Hendrik Verwoerd were taking steps to force women to carry passes, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. were boycotting segregated buses, inaugurating massive civil rights protests in the United States. Elsewhere in Africa, nationalist leaders were organizing mass movements and guerrilla struggles that ousted British, French, and Portuguese colonial rulers. This context meant that criticism of apartheid came not only from internal opposition movements, but also from international sources, particularly after the massacre of anti-pass protesters at Sharpeville focused international attention on the brutality necessary to uphold South Africa’s

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1986

African Economic History, 1988

The American Historical Review, Dec 1, 1987

The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2016

part that Africans themselves played in this decline is often overlooked. Given that the modern c... more part that Africans themselves played in this decline is often overlooked. Given that the modern concept of Africa is itself a colonial construct, with its modern nation-states a colonial contraption of heterogeneous cultures and diverse ethnicities; the role of tribal differences and loyalties in undermining the African struggle for emancipation in this particular narrative is well presented. The critical issue of ethnic vs. national identity and the relevance of this to the actualisation of African independence, as well as the role of African leadership in negotiating this identity is also extensively considered. This is crucial, given that the fundamental unit of identity of the African is mostly rooted in the affiliation to his tribe and clan (Achebe, ) and against the colonial backdrop of Africans’ contested humanity, the PanAfricanists, in re-asserting what it meant to be human, may well have forgotten to define what it meant to be ‘African’. That the author notes this as a drawback of the independence movement, places this book in a factual analytical class of its own. Overall, this is a deeply insightful, masterfully articulated must-read!

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1987

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 5, 2016

Record number, 722626. Article title, Sources of class consciousness : South African women in rec... more Record number, 722626. Article title, Sources of class consciousness : South African women in recent labor struggles. Author(s), Berger, I. Title, Women and class in Africa » Show more ed. by Claire Robertson and Iris Berger. Author ...

African American Studies Center, 2011

Lilian Masediba Matabane Ngoyi was a passionate anti-apartheid and women's rights ad... more Lilian Masediba Matabane Ngoyi was a passionate anti-apartheid and women's rights advocate and one of the most prominent woman leaders during the 1950s. Born in Pretoria in 1911, she attended primary school through Standard 6 and trained as a nurse for three years before becoming a seamstress. Her marriage to John Ngoyi ended with his death in an automobile accident. In 1945 Ngoyi began working in a garment factory and joined the Garment Workers' Union of the Transvaal. Her union activism led her to take part in the Defiance Campaign against apartheid laws. Ngoyi's arrest in 1952 for standing in the whites-only line at the post office in Pretoria changed the course of her life. From this time onward, while still struggling to support her family, she devoted herself to anti-apartheid activism. A passionate speaker, she was elected to the top positions in the Federation of South African Women and the African National Congress Women's League and became the first woman elected to the ANC Executive Committee. In 1954, as a delegate to the World Congress of Mothers, she traveled widely in Europe, China, and the Soviet Union. Upon returning to South Africa, Ngoyi was a key leader of the historic demonstrations against passes for women in 1955 and 1956. But her political prominence also made her a target of state repression. First arrested in the Treason Trial in 1956, she was among the anti-apartheid leaders detained after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. Between trial appearances and imprisonment, she continued her political activities. In the last two decades of her life, she suffered from a series of banning orders that restricted her to her Soweto home. She died on March 13, 1980.

第１部東部および南部アフリカの女性（古代から一八八〇年代まで；一八八〇年から現在まで）第２部西部および中西部アフリカの女性（先史時代の西部アフリカ；一八〇〇年までの西部スーダーン地域；西部... more 第１部東部および南部アフリカの女性（古代から一八八〇年代まで；一八八〇年から現在まで）第２部西部および中西部アフリカの女性（先史時代の西部アフリカ；一八〇〇年までの西部スーダーン地域；西部沿岸とその後背地—一四〇〇〜一八〇〇年；一八〇〇年までの中西部アフリカ；一九世紀の西部スーダーン地域；一九世紀の西アフリカ沿岸部とその後背地ほか）

African Economic History, 1987

In her recent essay in Feminist Studies, Claire Robertson notes that" the interdisciplin... more In her recent essay in Feminist Studies, Claire Robertson notes that" the interdisciplinary nature of both African studies and women's studies has contributed to their being largely ignored in disciplines or departments where the boundaries between fields are rigidly ...

Journal of Women's History, 2008

A t a conference on African women's studies held in the early 1990s, the virtual absence of inter... more A t a conference on African women's studies held in the early 1990s, the virtual absence of interest in the past was striking. As speakers from across the continent outlined the state of research in their respective countries, history was mentioned rarely, and then only as a hypothetical baseline for change. At the time, I attributed this divide between history and activism to the dependence of African universities and their scholarly activities on funding from present-oriented development agencies. Yet reading Judith Bennett's provocative, wide-ranging new book, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, has convinced me that African feminists are not alone in their inattention to history. Whether the key to mending this divide lies in focusing on the history of patriarchy and the "patriarchal equilibrium," as Bennett proposes for Western feminism, is not as clear. African women's history developed in a different context than the history of women and gender in Europe and the United States. Relatively new as an accepted academic field, African history grew rapidly in the late 1950s and early 1960s as former colonies discarded the bonds of over a half century of foreign rule. Like all national entities, these emerging countries tied their legitimacy in part to a reimagined past, both precolonial and colonial. With a natural tendency to build an identity around ideas of unity, nationalist historical writings rarely entertained the idea of "women" as a social category, ignoring the abundant evidence of African women's activist and organizational strength in many parts of the continent. An interest in women as historical actors developed only in the early 1970s from the cross-fertilization of feminism, the general growth of women's history as a field of scholarly inquiry, and an interest in women and development sparked by Ester Boserup's pathbreaking 1970 study, Woman's Role in Economic Development. 1 In response to Boserup's bold hypotheses, many researchers designed local and regional studies to investigate her ideas more closely. Most important for Africa were two core themes: colonialism and imperialism had led to a decline in women's status, and in Book Forum: Iris Berger 2008 131 most societies, women farmers played central economic roles. At a time when feminists in Europe and the United States were grappling with the nineteenth-century ideology of separate spheres that had siphoned women out of public life and into the household, an understanding of Africa's different legacy (and how it changed under colonial rule) helped to mold a new era of historical research. Relying on Boserup's model that traced women's subordination to colonialism, many of these accounts portrayed precolonial Africa as a "golden age" of gender equity tarnished by the abrasive effects of colonialism and capitalism. Unlike the glorification of medieval Europe Bennett highlights, this idealization of precolonial gender relations was short-lived. From its expansion in the 1970s, African women's history has developed in ways that parallel women's history in the United States and Europe, while also reflecting trends particular to African historiography. Similar to women's history elsewhere, a compensatory concern with forgotten heroines-queen mothers, merchant princesses, spirit mediums, and participants in resistance struggles-yielded to an interest in peasant and working-class women (under the strong influence of Marxist-feminism and underdevelopment theory), and later to a focus on the meaning of gender in African historical contexts. 2 Rather than attributing women's oppression and inequality primarily to colonialism, the newer works began to explore the "entanglement" of indigenous and external patriarchies, often arguing that new regimes of domination emerged from the collusion of colonial officials and African male elders. 3 More recent studies have continued to challenge mainstream scholarship in new ways, both by proposing revisionist women-centered narratives on such key topics as the emergence of African nationalism and by foregrounding such issues of central concern to women as motherhood, sexuality, and childbirth, rather than perceiving them as dependent variables of other socioeconomic changes. 4 The vitality of African women's history since the 1970s notwithstanding, unlike in Europe and the United States, large numbers of women's activists on the continent did not consider themselves feminists, dismissing feminism as a Western import with little relevance to southern African liberation movements or to poor women's daily struggles for survival. While many African scholars have now embraced a feminist identity, the interest in history is more mixed. 5 The pioneering journal Feminist Africa (launched in 2002), published by the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, confirms Bennett's point on the gap between feminism and history. The journal's website describes it as "the first journal on gender with a continental focus" whose aim is to promote African discourses on the gendered implications of "African political, educational, cultural and historical concerns" in the humanities and social sciences. 6 Yet the "history" in its articles rarely transcends the postcolonial past. 7 The few exceptions

The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2017

Previous literature on women's representation in the Ugandan Parliament painted a grim pictur... more Previous literature on women's representation in the Ugandan Parliament painted a grim picture of women exploited by political leaders, and brought into Parliament and other political spaces by a benevolent dictator who allowed their entry to extend and deepen his political networks. These women were expected to accept a subordinate and inferior place, and to defer to male authority. Female members cooperated dutifully by ‘knowing their place’ and by actively supporting the ‘hand that fed them’. Studies noted that women lacked gender consciousness and even the analytical power to understand the implications of the policies they helped pass. There was a general consensus that patriarchal attitudes in Parliament diminished…

During a turbulent colonial and postcolonial century, African women struggled to control their ow... more During a turbulent colonial and postcolonial century, African women struggled to control their own marital, sexual and economic lives and to gain a significant voice in local and national politics. This book introduces students to many remarkable women, who organized religious and political movements, fought in anti-colonial wars, ran away to escape arranged marriages, and during the 1990s began successful campaigns for gender parity in national legislatures. The book also explores the apparent paradox in the conflicting images of African women - as singularly oppressed and dominated by men, but also as strong, resourceful, and willing to challenge governments and local traditions to protect themselves and their families. Understanding the tension between women's power and their oppression, between their strength and their vulnerability, offers a new lens for understanding the relationship between the state and society in the twentieth century.

Women in Twentieth-Century Africa

African Novels in the Classroom