タイトル：基幹研究「アフリカ文化研究に基づく多元的世界像の探求」平成 24 年度第 2 回公開セミナー
日時：2012 年 5 月 29 日（火）午後 6 時より 8 時
場所：AA 研セミナー室（301）
報告者：Liazzat Bonate （ソウル大学）
報告タイトル：Gendering History: Muslim Women and Power in Matrilineal NorthernMozambique

報告要旨This presentation reflected Bonate’s ongoing research on Muslim matrilineal societies ofnorthern Mozambican and focused on the challenges in studying women in African
Muslim matrilineal society and suggestions of gendering Mozambican history.
First, the presentation outlined some of the major challenges:
 Addressing women living in Muslim societies, dominated by matriliny andin an African context, poses great challenges because each of these words/c
oncepts(women, gender, Muslim/Islam, matriliny, Africa) are highly contes

ted and controversial; Matriliny and Islam are often viewed as incompatible, so people who pract
ice both are described as not real or ‘orthodox’ Muslims but ‘syncretistic’ believers [who mix Islam with African culture and traditions]; This approach is discriminatory and perpetuates the image of Africans as
passive imitators [instead of active makers of their own destinies], igronam
uses [who don’t know the ‘true’ meaning of Islam]; it also defines Islam in an Orientalist fashion as static immutable `Arab`‘religion’ instead if a living faith; the existence of Islam is often viewed to be sufficient for transforming
matriliny into patriliny;
Second, the presentation focused on the predominance of the feminist approaches to thehistory of northern Mozambican matrilineal Muslim society, which do not allow for anadequate reflection of the reality. A short overview of the development of feminist
scholarship was given in order to underscore why this situation prevails in Mozambique,by highlighting in particularthat feminism is mostly a political movement, which influenced the Africanist
scholarship, who, when dealing with African women, have replicated Western
feminist approaches by identifying the universality of female oppression and of1

the dominance of patriarchy;
 The concept of gender presupposes addressing different genders [at the same time]– male, female, transgender, the ‘third gender’, etc., but in Africa,
and in Mozambique case in particular, the scholarship has not been very
successful in maintaining this equilibrium, and gender studies often meant
women’s studies; The development studies, aid and NGO consultancies commission gender studies, but the outcome is often about how women are oppressed by patriar
chy and are denied their rights by males; Religion, especially Islam, but also "African traditions" and culture are often blamed for this sitution a par with the late colonialism and modernity;
Third, the presentation looked into the scholarship that deals with matriliny, and how
the intersection of feminist and Orientalist approaches with regard the matrilineal
Muslim societies hindered the proper research of these type of societies in northernMozambique.
Fourth, the presentation ended with a suggestion that matrilineal Muslim societies likein northern Mozambqiue should be researched comparatively as there are othersocieties with similar co-existence of Islam and matriliny like along the matrilineal beltof Africa, in Minankabau in Sumatra, Indonesia; southern India, Filippines,a nd others.
The other suggestion was to adopt the approach of a Nigerian scholar Oyeronke
Oyewumi who criticized this blind imitation of Western scholarship and the adoption ofconcept that clearly did not fit into African historical or cultural context in her highly
acclaimed book The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender

Discourses. She has argued that it was necessary to bring local concepts and local
agency into the discussion.
*当報告の内容は、著者の著作物です。Copyrighted materials of the authors.

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