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JOKING MARKET WOMEN: CRITIQUING AND NEGOTIATING GENDER AND SOCIAL HIERARCHY IN KANKOSSA, MAURITANIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2014

Katherine Ann Wiley
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Abstract

The streets of Kankossa's busy daily market often ring with laughter as female vegetable vendors joke with each other and passersby. This joking comes at a time when gender roles are shifting in Mauritania since it has become challenging for many men to provide for their families, causing women to take on roles as significant income earners. Likewise, as slavery has diminished over the last century, Ḥarāṭīn, a group consisting of ex-slaves or descendants of slaves, have been negotiating their places in the polity. To gain insight into the shifting social order, this article analyses examples of joking by Ḥarāṭīn market women who in this way engage with issues of gender and the social hierarchy. The social space of the market is a critical setting for such practices since it both facilitates their occurrence and also gives women's words weight because they are spoken in the presence of an audience. While jokes are always ambiguous, women's joking in front of others in this space makes their jokes bite, thus enabling them to give voice to deeply personal anxieties and make sense of changes in the social order.

Résumé

Les rues du marché quotidien très fréquenté de Kankossa vibrent souvent au son des rires des vendeuses de légumes, qui plaisantent entre elles et avec les passants. Ces plaisanteries interviennent à une période où le rôle des sexes change en Mauritanie ; la difficulté, pour beaucoup d'hommes, de subvenir aux besoins de leur famille pousse les femmes à assumer le rôle de soutien de famille. De même, face au déclin de l'esclavage au cours du dernier siècle, les Ḥarāṭīn, qui regroupent des anciens esclaves ou descendants d'esclaves, négocient leur place dans l'organisation étatique. Pour mieux comprendre ce changement d'ordre social, cet article analyse des exemples de plaisanteries échangées au marché par les marchandes harāṭīn, qui traitent de genre et de hiérarchie sociale. L'espace social du marché est un cadre critique pour ces pratiques, car il facilite leur occurrence et donne du poids aux paroles des femmes parce qu'elles sont prononcées en présence d'un public. Les plaisanteries sont toujours ambigües, mais le fait que les femmes plaisantent ouvertement dans cet espace donne du mordant à leurs plaisanteries et leur permet ainsi d'exprimer des anxiétés extrêmement personnelles et de donner un sens aux changements de l'ordre social.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 101 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014 

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