ABSTRACT
The introduction chapter provides a framing of the book and a reading of the historiography and contemporary scholarship on gender, generation and custom in South Africa. The chapter raises and navigates the challenges of the changes the present have brought in relation to a recognition of recurrence: that for every generation, struggles with the elders and with the past is new. By bringing together historical accounts with the present, the chapter frames the unique and important way that the volume is considering generational conflict, especially between older and younger women. The chapter argues that given the under-examination of generational relations amongst women and how this shapes custom and power, the volume and South African case goes some way to recentre generation alongside gender as an important site of power specifically within woman-to-woman relations.
