The Dance of Politics

"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) "Gilman's insightful book... is very solidly rooted in first-hand observation, a piece of detailed reportage where events and discussions are related with the authority of extensive empirical witness over more than a decade. Direct quotation from interviews is extensive and the narrative is firmly grounded in the grassroots. At times it has a diary-like aspect...The reader is placed alongside the author, close to the raw data... [A] worthy addition." -Africa