If Books Fail, Try Beauty: An Ethnography of Educated Womanhood in the New East Africa
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Author Description
If Books Fail, Try Beauty: An Ethnography of Educated Womanhood in the New East Africa examines Kampala's university-based sexual economy wherein female students exchange sexual favors for money, grades, and luxury commodities. These practices increase young women's risk for infectious disease, pregnancy, and moral rebuke, yet many women engaged in "transactional" sex are adept students at Makerere University and members of East Africa's nascent middle class. Based on thirty-six months of ethnographic research, If Books Fail reveals that students participate in Makerere's sexual economy to pursue social advancement in a newly privatized education sector.The book charts the passage and effects of Uganda's education restructuring from 2004 onwards and demonstrates how these reforms - in opposition to the government's gender equality aims - undermine female students' opportunities for success by reshaping the meaning of "educated woman." If Books Fail brings together formerly disparate conversations about education, sexuality, and state policy to offer a theorization of emerging forms of selfhood in the post colony.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This work investigates how the privatization of higher education in Uganda has reshaped the social and economic strategies of female university students, specifically regarding their participation in transactional sexual economies. Brooke Schwartz Bocast, an anthropologist, utilizes thirty-six months of intensive ethnographic fieldwork at Makerere University to analyze the intersection of state policy, gendered expectations, and individual agency. She argues that these sexual economies are not merely deviant behaviors but are rational, albeit risky, responses to the structural pressures of a neoliberal education system that demands high financial investment for social mobility.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Longitudinal ethnographic data collected over three years at Makerere University.
- Analysis of the impact of Ugandan education restructuring policies implemented from 2004 onward.
- Theoretical framework connecting sexual economies to the development of post-colonial middle-class identities.
- Case studies detailing the lived experiences of female students navigating academic and financial precarity.
Scope Limits
- The research is geographically and institutionally focused on Kampala and Makerere University, and does not claim to represent all East African educational contexts.
- The study does not provide a comprehensive policy manual for institutional reform, focusing instead on the sociological implications of existing structures.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars in African studies and anthropology recognize this text as a nuanced contribution to the study of post-colonial gender dynamics and neoliberal education reform. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which effectively bridges the gap between macro-level policy analysis and intimate ethnographic observation.
Page Count:
232
Publication Date:
2023-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190852143
ISBN-13:
9780190852146
Education
Gender Studies
Anthropology
Globalization
Sociology
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