Em casa da tua mãe: gênero e parentesco entre os macuas de Moçambique durante o período colonial

Abstract

Inspired by the Nigerian sociologist Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí’s critique of Western gender theories, the present work is an attempt to reflect on how to work with the concept of gender when studying the past of the Emacua-speaking societies in northern Mozambique. Given that these are mostly matrilineal societies living in a social context in which Islamization and the spread of European culture promoted paternal authority, the research focuses on the intersection between gender and kinship relations in order to understand how they structured power relations. To achieve this goal, it uses Provérbios Macuas, a book published in 1982 by the priest and Portuguese missionary Alexandre Valente de Matos, as a primary source. In addition, the Dicionário Português-Macua, published in 1974 by the same author, is also used. Following the methodological proposal of Ifi Amadiume’s Social History, the research contrasts Matos’ works with other ethnographies to analyze how the missionary depicted the Macua culture and its social institutions. As one of the first intellectuals to record part of the Macua oral tradition on written language, Matos placed himself in a position of influencing the way in which we, people of the present, access and interpret the past of these populations. Because of this, the investigation was able to identify some deviations and contradictions, especially with regard to the translation of kinship terminologies and the power dynamics that characterize matrilineage. Among these contradictions, the most significant was the effort to frame Macua matrilineages within the nuclear family model, which in turn produced a series of consequences for the way we perceive gender relations. For this reason, the research also gets a deeper look into Amadiume’s critique on how the concepts of matriarchy and matrilineage were historically understood by classical anthropology and how this influenced Matos and other intellectuals of his time. It is based on this debate that the research suggests the adoption of Ifi Amadiume’s matricentric unit as a model for understanding the organization of the Macua matrilines of the past