SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Owo, omo ati alafia (money, children and peace) play an Important part in the everyday struggles of women and men in Ado-Odo, a small town in southwestern Nigeria. Without money, alafia becomes all the more elusive, without children it is hard to be happy; alafia is less a goal to be actively pursued, than a state defined by an absence of difficulties and trouble. Owo, omo ati alafia are the things that women and men pray for and struggle to maintain. In this thesis, I explore the relational contexts in which their quests for money, children and peace take place. Discourses on women's behaviour in Ado-Odo present a powerful normative critique in which women and men of all ages are lively participants. Conjuring up unruly women who fail to obey their husbands, fight with his other wives and run after men and money, these discourses make reference to another time, 'the olden days', when women endured their marriages without complaint and knew their place. Discourses on the kinds of trouble that can disrupt the quest for money, children and peace implicate particular kinds of women as trouble-makers, invoking quite different models of gendered agency. Focusing on the relational positions that people occupy as subjects in different domains of association and at different points in their life courses, I take discourses on women as a starting point from which to explore the impact of social and economic change on gender relations in Ado-Odo. Situating my account historically and in the different domains of association within and between which people move in their everyday lives, I draw on narratives of change and the lived experiences of people of different generations. 1 explore what discourses on women's behaviour say about women and men, and about relationships between them and look at the ways in which trouble is made and averted, focusing on relationships between women. Exploring further some of the challenges of everyday struggles in changing times, 1 address issues of contingency, uncertainty and agency in the pursuit of owo and omo, and the means to find alafia.