Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-2c8nx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-19T14:27:18.278Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Questions of Identity and Inheritance: A Critical Review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's In My Father's House

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Nkiru Nzegwu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Hypatia , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Special Issue: The Family and Feminist Theory , Winter 1996 , pp. 175 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In my father's house. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1969. Is matriliny doomed in Africa? In Man in Africa, ed. Douglas, Mary and Kaberry, Phyllis M.London: Tavistock Publications.Google Scholar
Nukunya, G. K. 1992. Tradition and change in Ghana. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.Google Scholar
Ofiemun, Odia. 1992. Africa's many mansions. West Africa, 20–26 July, 1231–32.Google Scholar
Oppong, Christine. 1986. Middle class African marriage. London: George Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1929. Ashanti law and constitution. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sarbah, J. M. 1897. Fanti customary laws. London: Clowes and Sons.Google Scholar
Taiwo, Olufemi. 1995. Appropriating Africa: An essay on new Africanist schools. Issue: A Journal of Opinion 23(1): 39–45.Google Scholar
Wiredu, Kwasi. 1990. An Akan perspective on human rights. In Human rights in Africa: Cross‐cultural perspectives, ed. Ahmed An‐Na'im, Abdullahi and Deng, Francis M.Washington D. C.: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar