ABSTRACT
Robert F. Murphy research in Niger and observations bring to light, for the first time in the anthropological literature on Twaregs, some of the more important kinship-related and economic concomitants of Twareg women's high social position. Murphy notes that, while cultural norms mediate basic contradictions in nature, in doing so "they set up a series of subcontradictions". Basic biological oppositions of what Murphy has termed male "initiative" and female "restraint" are resolved through culture, resulting in a normative situation where, among Twaregs, men may be characterized as aloof and distant, and women as independent and assertive. Women are the organizers of all social events, such as the drum playing gathering, where women devise an impromptu drum by stretching a wet hide across the top of the wooden millet mortar. Murphy reported that the number of unions may even exceed seven or eight during the lifetime of an individual.
