Claiming Civic Virtue: Gendered Network Memory in the Mara Region, Tanzania (Women in Africa and the Diaspora)

Among communities in the Mara region of Tanzania, it is considered men€s responsibility to maintain €œhistory.€ But when Jan Bender Shetler€s questions turned to specific familial connections within the village, she discovered her male informants had to occasionally leave the room€•to ask their wives for clarification. The result is an original and wide-ranging investigation of the gendered nature of historical memory and its influence on the development of the region over the past 150 years. Shetler€s exploration of these oral traditions and histories opens exciting new vistas for understanding how women and men in this culture tell their stories and assert their roles as public intellectuals€•with important implications for research in African and gender studies, and the history of ethnicity and nationalism.