“To put men in a bottle”: Eroticism, kinship, female power, and transactional sex in Maputo, Mozambique (original) (raw)
Related papers
The article explores how young Mozambican women's migratory trajectories towards Europe are shaped by sexual relationships with older white men and obligations towards female kin. Triads of exchange between young women known as curtidoras (women enjoying life) and their partners and kin in Maputo are understood through theories of patronage and exchange moralities. Searching for respect, adventure, and consumption in the sexual economy, young women at the same time struggle to ensure their families' well-being by redistributing the money they extract from white men. Sexual-monetary transactions, love, and desire must be understood as part of broader moralities of exchange in which migration to Europe and sending of remittances is also a kinship project. The forms of patronage available in Maputo's sexual economy become stepping stones as well as obstacles to migration northwards.
Sexualized bodies: Masculinity, power and identity in Mozambique
NORMA, 2012
Drawing on ethnographic work carried out among Mozambican men living in Maputo (the capital of Mozambique), this paper intends to describe how subordinate men from a poor background are reconstructing their masculinity through the explicit sexualization of their self. It has been shown that among poor Mozambican men the lack of money or other material goods is compensated by complex practices and a variety of discourses on sex and sexuality. Sexuality, and its bodily enactment, is then used to reconstruct a powerful sense of manhood, which may take a variety of forms ranging from identification with the norm of the 'good lover' to more struggle-based discourses. All of these strategies imply an explicit investment in various forms of 'bodily capital', which may lead to the building up of a phallocentric masculinity, though women's sexual agency is not ignored. In male discourse, a value is attributed to goods, whether material or symbolic, which function discursively according to an imagery of economic exchange as if the body were a commodity, a discursively constructed capital of manhood. Through a number of ethnographic examples, I will contend that we can consider masculinity as a complex structure of capitals that can be enacted in different spheres and with different meanings. As a result, different power hierarchies can be reconstructed and a degree of plurality may be incorporated into what we consider hegemonic masculinity. Sexuality and sex, while performed through a bodily hexis and discourses on power and control, are at the core of these processes and represent a vital constituent of the male self.
De Jure
In Zimbabwe, the delict of seduction has two species, namely seduction under common law derived from Roman-Dutch law and seduction under customary law. The universal feature in these species is that they were both conceived in patriarchal societies marred with gender inequalities. These inequalities were exhibited, inter alia, in stiffer sexual mores being imposed on women. In these societies, men allotted property rights to themselves over the sexuality of women who were perpetually under their tutelage. Conceptually, it is argued that the delict of seduction is a legal incarnation of these gender inequality-stricken notions. This paper unmasks the plethora of prejudices, challenges and gender inequalities which are engineered by the delict of seduction during litigation and draws on hegemonic masculinity in patriarchal societies as a theoretical framework.
Philogynous Masculinities: Contextualizing Alternative Manhood in Mozambique
Men and Masculinities, 2012
Masculinity studies in Africa have often highlighted young men's tendencies to be dominant, violent, and selfish in relation to female peers. This article introduces the concept of ''philogynous masculinities'' as part of an exploration of more gender equitable tendencies among young men in secondary schools in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. Findings from fieldwork in schools and student's neighborhoods reveal that understanding alternative notions of manhood requires sensitivity to the contexts in which these are accentuated. While the bom pico notion, stressing men's sexual satisfaction of women, received emphasis in the context of sex education, the ndota notion of restraint and antiviolence was activated under homely circumstances. Discussing multiple male subjectivities across contexts rather than classifying individual men allows for alternative configurations without ignoring their contradictory manifestations. The article urges masculinity studies to move beyond dichotomies between modern and traditional forms and to explore entanglements of hegemonic and alternative masculinities.
2020
This paper explores the initiation of women – or Vukhomba – in Pafuri, Mozambique. As historical literature illustrates, this is an event that is linked to the repression and regulation of sexuality by colonialists, missionaries and independent state rule. However, the paper forwards the proposition that initiation and sexuality are crucial for the self-expression and authority of women, and that it is in fact, central to the way in which people re-orientate themselves after events of war and displacement. Sexuality is part of the allure of the Pafuri as a border region, particularly for residents in South Africa and Mozambique, who share common linkages with each other over international boundaries. The paper argues that Vukhomba is an important aspect of indigenous knowledge that is central to the way in which people manage disruption.
2020
This paper explores the initiation of women-or Vukhomba-in Pafuri, Mozambique. As historical literature illustrates, this is an event that is linked to the repression and regulation of sexuality by colonialists, missionaries and independent state rule. However, the paper forwards the proposition that initiation and sexuality are crucial for the self-expression and authority of women, and that it is in fact, central to the way in which people re-orientate themselves after events of war and displacement. Sexuality is part of the allure of the Pafuri as a border region, particularly for residents in South Africa and Mozambique, who share common linkages with each other over international boundaries. The paper argues that Vukhomba is an important aspect of indigenous knowledge that is central to the way in which people manage disruption.
“Sexing African Time and Space”: The Fetish of the Colonial Gender
Journal of law and social sciences, 2020
This article examines how Alain Mabanckou uses sexual allegories in his novel Broken glass (2010) to express (neo)-colonial realities in which Africa is charmed by the West into assuming the role of the sexual subaltern. Mabanckou appears to reinvigorate the sexual allegories of rape and prostitution for expressing the penetrative tendencies of colonialism by affixing their connotations of exploitation to the harsh socioeconomic and political realities of (neo)-colonialism, thus creating a motif which is termed in the article as the fetish of colonial gender. Its coalescent value might be of great interest in postcolonial studies since it reveals how neocolonialists ascribe the subaltern's time and space with exploitable sex through the charm of global economy. The critical discussion is built on textual research methods and it highlights on the fabric that holds the neo-colonial relationship between the West and Africa.