Money Takes Care Of Shame, By Beth Buggenhagen

In her ethnography Muslim Families in Global Senegal: Money Takes Care of Shame, Beth Buggenhagen explores the various ways in which figures like Sokna Géer, Dembá Géer, Rama Géer and others create and produce social and symbolic meaning through often complicated processes of exchange imbricated in the culture of Senegal. An understanding of how these figures exchange clothing, produce identity and gender, and maintain interpersonal connections and kinship links through obligation—among other processes of exchange—are all essential to a more accurate understanding of social and symbolic production and the ways in which this production effects expansive philosophies of economic, political, and social change. In Senegal, high-ranking women

For many women living in urban areas, traditional marriage may not appear as beneficial as other forms of love and cultural exchange. Instead of patriarchal bargaining, young women and men like Rama might seek out other forms of protection and stability, especially in times of economic uncertainty. In this vein, “commodified courting” became beneficial. Over time, notions of romantic love change. Consider the influence of “capitalism and colonialism” on the effects of women leaving their male-controlled households and identities behind in favor of their own methods of consumptions and expression. Incidentally, Rama seems perfectly capable of managing her finances, even without a spouse to aid her. When asked about her lack of a husband and the difficulties her situation might provoke if she does not travel abroad, she simply responded that Dakar was her home and where she wished to

Subsequently, movements concerned with the freedom and rights of women aim to help the modern woman “break” from her family and thus become an agent of social processes in the face of oppression. Many of these efforts become enmeshed with “rethinking the meaning of security for women” while simultaneously ignoring the security that women claim for themselves through the production of cloth and its subsequent production of self. As Pamela Scully notes, many discourses from political, governmental or NGOs focus upon the struggles, trials, and crimes committed against women instead of upon the ways they find “solidarity and…meaning about womanhood and gender.” Clearly, many popular discourses of the day fail to deliberate the many minutiae bound in Senegal women’s gendered