In Search of Gender Justice: Rights and Relationships in Matrilineal Malawi

Description

What might gender justice look like in matrilineal Malawi? Ideas about gender and human rights have exerted considerable influence over African policy makers and civil society organisations in recent years, and Malawi is no exception. There, concerted efforts at civic education have made the concepts of human and women's rights widely accessible to the rural poor, albeit in modified form. In this book, Jessica Johnson listens to the voices of ordinary Malawian citizens as they strive to resolve disputes and achieve successful gender and marital relations. Through nuanced ethnographic description of aspirations for gender and marital relationships; extended analysis of dispute resolution processes; and an examination of the ways in which the approaches of chiefs, police officers and magistrates intersect, this study puts relationships between law, custom, rights, and justice under the spotlight.

Jessica Johnson is a Lecturer in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Her research has been published in the journals Africa, the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Review of African Political Economy and she is co-editor of Pursuing Justice in Africa: Competing Imaginaries and Contested Practices with George Karekwaivanane (forthcoming). She held the Phyllis and Eileen Gibbs Travelling Research Fellowship in 2014-15 and is an editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies.