Logics of Affordability and Worth: Gendered Consumption in Rural Uganda

Main author: Dolan, Catherine
Other authors: Gordon, Claire
Steinfield, Laurel
Hennegan, Julie
Format: Journal Article           
Online access: Click here to view record


id eprints-30802
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
English
English
language_search English
English
English
description This article explores logics of affordability and worth within rural Ugandan households. Through an analysis of how worth is ascribed to certain goods, from the morally ambiguous personal consumption of alcohol and beauty products to the “responsible” category of educational spending and sanitary pads, the article demonstrates how gender norms and anxieties are marked and sustained in the consumption practices of the household, constituting what is deemed necessary, affordable, and responsible. Moral obligation is differentially distributed between genders: women are deemed responsible for household expenditure, their personal consumption preferences constrained, whereas men are able to delimit a sphere of personal consumption separate from the household, with limited accountability to its moral requirements. The gendered nature of power relations is thus revealed both in the apportioning of moral duty and in the construction of affordability through which consumption is enabled.
format Journal Article
author Dolan, Catherine
author_facet Dolan, Catherine
Gordon, Claire
Steinfield, Laurel
Hennegan, Julie
authorStr Dolan, Catherine
author_letter Dolan, Catherine
author2 Gordon, Claire
Steinfield, Laurel
Hennegan, Julie
author2Str Gordon, Claire
Steinfield, Laurel
Hennegan, Julie
title Logics of Affordability and Worth: Gendered Consumption in Rural Uganda
publisher Wiley
publishDate 2020
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30802/