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life in northern India, Assen, Netherlands 1968.Nita KumarSub-Saharan Africa: Fulbe SocietiesTerminology alone does not offer a sensible guide
to intimate family relationships between husband
and wife, siblings, children and parents, and ex-
tended kin. Rather, in order to discuss the complex
interaction of gender, Islam, and family in sub-
Saharan Africa, one has to examine the relation-
ships between individuals and within domestic
groups that are characterized by continually shift-
ing relationships of authority, influence, emotional
solidarity, and conflict. Family and gender are bet-
ter explored as negotiated processes than terms to
be defined. Several aspects of these relationships
are addressed in this entry, such as power, access to
resources, political economy, marriage patterns,
mobility, inter-generational relationships, fostering,
social status, and kinship. Attention must be paid
to the embedded nature of gender as a material,
social institution and as a set of ideologies located
in a particular politico-economic and historic con-
text. Abu-Lughod argues for “ethnographies of the
particular” by which she locates the effects of
extra-local and long-term processes as manifested
locally and specifically, produced in the actions of
individuals living their particular lives, inscribed in
their bodies and their words (Abu-Lughod 1999,
150). Following Abu-Lughod’s model, this entry
raises these broader theoretical and practical issues
related to the study of family, gender, and Islam and
then situates these ideas within a particular social,
geographic, and historic context – that of the
Muslim Fulbe of West Africa.
Fulbe is the term used in the Futa region of
Guinea to describe the people who speak the lan-
guage Pular, known elsewhere as Fula, Fulani, Peul,
or Haalpulaaren. The Fulbe are one of West
Africa’s most populous ethnic groups and are
widely scattered across the sub-region in a more or144 family relations
less continuous belt, stretching from The Gambia
and Senegal in the west to Cameroon and beyond in
the east (Oppong 2002, 28). While they are consid-
ered one of the major cattle-keeping peoples of the
world (Riesman 1984, 171), they are also known as
farmers, traders, and learned Islamic teachers. The
Fulbe brought Islam to the Guinea/ Senegal region
in the mid 1700s, when the pastoralist nomads set-
tled down in villages with their conquered slaves.
The jihad provided the initial justification for the
enslavement of the infidels, a practice perpetuated
through the Fulbe social hierarchy of nobles, ex-
captives, and artisan groups. Most Fulbe practice a
syncretic form of (Tijàniyya) Sufism, in which cul-
tural beliefs and norms are combined with Islamic
principles.
In the traditional view of a rural Fulbe household
in Guinea, the child is born into the suudu(hut),
given to herneene(mother) by her baaba(father).
He or she generally shares the suuduwith full
siblings or neene-gotoobe(children of the same
mother) who are raised according to their sex and
birth order. Since many marriages are polygynous,
the household may be composed of several build-
ings that house co-wives and their children and
correspond to discrete household economies. Each
wife has her separate set of tools, utensils, and
foodstuffs for daily activities and is usually respon-
sible for producing items for sauce such as toma-
toes, beans, onions, and okra from her suntuure
(household garden) and for purchasing clothing,
shoes, and medicine for her children. Money gained
from the sale of items from the suntuure, from
income-generating activities outside the household,
or from grain harvested in a field given to her exclu-
sively for cultivation by her husband are considered
hers to keep. The beyngure, or entire domestic unit
into which an individual is born, might be
extremely large and widespread. Usually the oldest
male is considered the head of the household and is
the one in charge of all the different domestic units
situated in the fenced area, of which there may be
many. Included may be aging parents, semi-perma-
nent visitors, children who are being fostered, a ten-
ant who is farming for the season or practicing a
trade, or a son who has married and is living with
the family.
Family relationships tend to be more normative
in rural than urban areas because there is strong
community power to sanction behavior and rela-
tionships. For the patrilineal Fulbe, parallel cousin
marriage is preferred in order to maintain wealth
and land within the family. The Fulbe refer to this
as the best and worst type of marriage, as there is
simultaneously great familial support and intense