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How gender and class intersect in Malawi through women's roles as political praise performers
The Dance of Politics
Gender, Performance, and Democratization in Malawi
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Lisa Gilman
"The Dance of Politics is well written and analytically provocative. Gilman advances the scholarship on intersections between performance, gender, and nation building in postcolonial Africa and makes an important contribution in this regard. The situating of Malawi political dance within a broader understanding of political power, imbalances in economic power, and the gendering of power are the strengths of this book. The Dance of Politics is an excellent example of a diachronic, historical documentation of an African cultural form."
—Daniel Reed, Associate Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University
Election campaigns, political events, and national celebration days in Malawi usually feature groups of women who dance and perform songs of praise for politicians and political parties. These lively performances help to attract and energize throngs of prospective voters. However, as Lisa Gilman explains, “praise performing” is one of the only ways that poor women are allowed to participate in a male-dominated political system.
Although political performances by women are not unique to Malawi, the case is complicated by the fact that until 1994 women in this country were required to perform on behalf of the long-reigning political party—the Malawi Congress Party—and its self-declared “President for Life,” Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda. This is the first book to examine the present-day situation, where issues of gender, economics and politics collide in surprising ways. Along with its solid grounding in the relevant literature, The Dance of Politics draws strength from Gilman’s firsthand observations and her interviews with a range of participants in the political process, from dancers to politicians to human rights activists.
Excerpt
Reviews
"In this carefully documented book, Lisa Gilman demonstrates how the embodied experiences of women’s political dancing have served to both reinscribe and challenge women’s subordinate status in Malawi. Through a nuanced analysis of the transformations of women's praise performing, Gilman provides an interdisciplinary ethnography that serves as an excellent model of intersectional research. She examines how power and agency operate on, with, and through women’s performative bodies and minds at the intersections of gender, politics, and economics. A must read for anyone interested in women, gender, and power in Africa."
—Jennifer Leigh Disney, Associate Professor of Political Science at Winthrop University and author of Women’s Activism and Feminist Agency in Mozambique and Nicaragua (Temple)
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Gender, Power, and Performance
2. Dance and Nationalism in the Independence Movement
3. Dance and Social Control During Banda’s Presidency
4. Dance, the Transition to Multipartyism, and Patronage
5. Power and Performance in Political Rallies
6. Why Do Women Dance?
7. Gendering Democracy
8. Gender at the Intersection of Politics, Democratization, and Tradition
Appendix A: Brief Timeline of Malawi’s Recent Po liti cal History
Appendix B: People Interviewed
Appendix C: Political Functions Attended and Referenced
Appendix D: Associated Multimedia Websites
References
Index
About the Author(s)
 | Lisa Gilman is Assistant Professor in the English Department and Folklore Program at the University of Oregon. |
Subject Categories
Music and Dance
African Studies
Women's Studies
In the series
African Soundscapes, edited by Gregory Barz.
African music has been a topic of considerable scholarly and general interest. The books in this new interdisciplinary series will highlight contemporary African music in its cultural contexts and the contributions of African expressive culture to global music traditions. The series will include works by scholars based in Africa.