Mary H. Moran - MASU
341 Eggers Hall
Add to: Outlook, ICal, Google Calendar
Moynihan Institute Of Global Affairs, and Maxwell African Scholars Union present:
Mary H. Moran, Professor of Anthropology and Africana and Latin American Studies, Colgate University
My Mother Wouldn't let Me: The Authority of Female Elders and Recruitment to Armed Factions in Liberia
This talk is part of a book-length project on the re-negotiation of gender in post-conflict societies. I pose the question; what does it mean to be a citizen of a "failed state;" that has come under the trusteeship of outside entities like the United Nations and a host of NGOs? What does it mean when those outside entities define most men as suspected "perpetrators" of violence and most women as its "victims" who are in need of empowerment? Where does this leave men who did not commit violence, and women who did? In my interviews with men who did not participate in violence during the 14-year Liberian civil war, it emerged that female elders often prevented young men from joining the armed factions. Many studies have addressed the ways young men and boys have been recruited for violence but there is little scholarly work on the forces that keep them out of the fighting. I examine the "supply side," of young male violence: the households where these young men grow up and the claims of women over their labor.
Mary H. Moran is Professor of Anthropology and Africana and Latin American Studies at Colgate University She conducted fieldwork in Liberia in 1982-83, 2006, 2008, and 2009 and with Liberians living in the United States in 1992-2004. Her major publications include Civilized Women: Gender and Prestige in Southeastern Liberia (1990, Cornell University Press), Liberia: The Violence of Democracy (2006, University of Pennsylvania Press), and articles in Annual Review of Anthropology, African Studies Review, Anthropological Quarterly, and other journals and edited volumes.
For information on accessibility, or to request accommodation, please contact Marc Albert 315-443-9248
Sponsored by the Maxwell African Scholars Union at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
Co-sponsored by: Department of Anthropology
Open to
Public
Contact
Accessibility
Contact to request accommodations
![Exterior of Maxwell in black and white when there was no Eggers building](/images/default-source/callouts---large/maxwell-centennial.jpg?Status=Master&sfvrsn=2af85b3f_1)
We’re Turning 100!
To mark our centennial in the fall of 2024, the Maxwell School will hold special events and engagement opportunities to celebrate the many ways—across disciplines and borders—our community ever strives to, as the Oath says, “transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”
Throughout the year leading up to the centennial, engagement opportunities will be held for our diverse, highly accomplished community that now boasts more than 38,500 alumni across the globe.