1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910807229603321

Autore

Jean-Baptiste Rachel

Titolo

Conjugal rights : marriage, sexuality, and urban life in colonial Libreville, Gabon / / Rachel Jean-Baptiste

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Athens, Ohio : , : Ohio University Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-8214-4503-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (317 p.)

Collana

New African Histories Series

Disciplina

306.8096721

Soggetti

Marriage - Gabon - Libreville - History

Divorce - Gabon - Libreville - History

Sex - Gabon - Libreville - History

Customary law - Gabon - Libreville - History

Gabon History 1839-1960

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Narrating a History of Domestic Life, Sexuality, Being, and Feeling in Urban Africa; Part I: From Atlantic Ocean Trading Post to Colonial Capital City, 1849-1929; 1: Sexual Economy in the Era of Trade and Politics; 2: Planning, Protest, and Prostitution; Part II: Libreville's Growth, 1930-1960; 3: Migration and Governance; 4: The Bridewealth Economy; 5: Jurisprudence; 6: "Faire Bon Ami"(To Be Good Friends); 7: "A Black Girl Should Not Be with a White Man"; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

Conjugal Rights is a history of the role of marriage and other arrangements between men and women in Libreville, Gabon, during the French colonial era, from the mid-nineteenth century through 1960. Conventional historiography has depicted women as few in number and of limited influence in African colonial towns, but this book demonstrates that a sexual economy of emotional, social, legal, and physical relationships between men and women indelibly shaped urban life.  Bridewealth became a motor of African economic activity, as men and women promised, earned, borrowed, transferred, and absconded