In 1948 Kikuyu women in Murang' a district staged a protest against compulsory labour for soil conservation works. The protest emerged as a result of women's frustrations and increasing insecurity produced by the drive for peasant accumulation in the reserve, and accordingly has been viewed in terms of the growing gender conflict within the household over resource control which became an aspect in the internal debates over land which culminated in the declaration of a state of Emergency in Kenya in 1952. The aim of the thesis is not to disprove this, but to point, by way of examination of the key institutions and ideologies defining the lives of Kikuyu women; marriage and the kinship network, which combined under the single principle of bride wealth, at some of the processes by which women came to be divested of their rights in land. Until the 1920s, the principles of pre-colonial social organisation, mbari and riika, which together had acted to mediate the distribution of primary resources among adult members of Kikuyu society continued to uphold the control of female and younger male reproduction by male elders. The failure of the change-over in tribal government which should have taken place throughout Kikuyuland during the 1920s, is identified as the point at which the ideology of community and kinship which had supported the survival and growth of society in the pre-colonial period began to unravel. The overwhelming significance of the event known as ituika to the development of the Kikuyu polity and its centrality in sustaining the ideology of riika and the relationships which it supported, is undermined by the insufficiency of the archival and oral data. Nevertheless, the coincidence of the emergence of ituika, with the intensification of inter-generational debates over political authority and control over new agencies of resource distribution in the reserve, are linked to the conflicts over land, and what many writers have identified as the redefinition of land rights in favour mbari interests which began in the late 1920s. Of the ideologies which had traditionally supported women's rights in the household, it was the notion of kin contributions to, and receipt of, bridewealth that invested kin interests in the survival of a marriage, which provided women with the assurance of security and support in the household. The demise of riika ideology and the increased use of more exclusive forms of wealth as bridewealth, led to a more restricted definition of kinship, and what colonial observers decried as the commercialization of the bridewealth negotiation. By the 1920s, while money had come increasingly to replace livestock in the equation, the role of women in defining male control of land had become enhanced by the greater emphasis on the land allocating powers of the mbari. Indeed the thesis argues that by the 1920s, for rich and poor men alike, control of female reproduction had become of overwhelming importance as a means of securing claims to land, and of making that land more profitable. Furthermore attempts by the British administration from the 1930s onwards, to modify customary marriage by imposing certain restrictions on the performance and practice of the bridewealth custom supported the development of more exclusive ideas about marriage and kinship which for women, sharpened the insecurity produced by land hunger, over-population and modifications in customary practice.

This thesis is based upon ethnographic fieldwork on the process of becoming married in Cairo. It focuses specifically upon the experiences of Cairene Muslims, and centres on the profound sense of anxiety and uncertainty which so frequently surrounds the marriage-making process. This thesis is an attempt to make sense of the salience of these emotions, against a backdrop of economic and political instability, a broader interest in modesty and decorum, and public concern about an alleged ‘marriage crisis’. It also explores the various ways in which prospective affines seek to manage the pervasive sense of anxiety and uncertainty associated with the production of marriage in Cairo. To this end, the thesis examines the ways in which phenomena, ranging from assessments about the ‘suitability’ of a given conjugal home to the perceived outcome of a particular form of petitionary prayer, enter into decisions about whom to marry and come to affect confidence in a given choice. The thesis thus presents a complex picture of the agency of prospective affines, and pays particular attention to the relationship between agency and knowledge.

Thesis (M.Ed.) --University of Limpopo, 2009

The object of this thesis is to explore the representation of ‘ Thainess ’ in Thai wedding magazines. The thesis adopts semiotic and multimodal analysis as methods to examine how cover pages, photographs, editorial contents and advertisement s in the magazines communicate their denotative and connotative meanings through primary markers and modality markers such as pose, objects, setting, framing, lights, shadow and colour tone. Subsequently , each image is examined through its depiction of people in the image to determine any st ereotypical cultural attributes that highlight a distinction between the traditionalised Thai and modernised Thai bride. This thesis argues that the legacy of Thailand ’ s semi colonial history constructs an ambivalent relationship with the West and Thailand ’ s self - orientalising tendency, as well as the diffusion of hybrid cultures and modern Thai beauty ideals. Self - orientalising tendencies and the desire to encapsulate ‘ Thainess ’ are thusly observed in the magazines ’ representation of traditional ‘ Thainess ’ with a nostalgic overtone, by linking the ideals of traditional beauty to the imagined qualities of heroines in Thai classic literature and aristocratic ladies from pre-modern Siam through fashion and traditional beautifying remedies.