ABSTRACT
Kiran Cunningham offers us an ethnographic study set in a Mende village in contemporary Sierra Leone. Her study centers on postmarital residence patterns and their impact on gender relations and female power. From a methodological point of view, Cunningham’s study highlights the negotiation process that is involved in decisionmaking about where to set up a household, and uncovers the different stakes men and women have in the decision. Wives who live in their natal communities, Cunningham argues, enjoy a greater degree of autonomy and respect than wives who live in their husband’s communities. She also finds evidence of deliberate attempts on the part of women to stay closer to home, in particular as economic conditions shift in a way that disrupts previous patterns. Her study adds a political-economic dimension to the analyses of female positionality common to the essays in this section.
