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Since the 1970s there have been several studies of Hausa women in northern Nigerian cities (e.g. Piton, 1979; Coles, 1983; Knipp, 1987). Cities were chosen for research because they supposedly contain a wider range of female roles and activities than villages. Quite a few studies of Hausa-speaking Muslim women have been conducted in Kano (e.g. Schildkrout, 1979, 1982; Mack, 1981; Callaway, 1987; Starratt and Sule, 1991; Nast, 1992; Hutson, 1997). Avoiding the concept of 'Hausa' as an ethnic category, the term `Kano women' was introduced (e.g. Callaway, 1987), referring to women's location rather than their ethnic or linguistic background. However, `Kano women' can mean a whole range of things, Kano being today a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural city of about 2 million inhabitants. The female Hausa-- speaking inhabitants do not constitute a socially homogeneous group. Coles and Mack (1991) demonstrate that the lives and experiences of individual Hausa-speaking women may vary considerably according to nationality, urban or rural environment, social status, marital position, age, level of education, economic activity and other factors. However, they state, `Because women's primary allegiances remain with kin and descent groups, female solidarity and a common class identification have not emerged among most Hausa women' (1991: 15; see also Cooper, 1997: 168).
This article aims to demonstrate that alternative concepts of community and identity have in fact developed among the wives of civil servants who live on a modern housing estate in the city of Kano, the barracks (barika). I will first outline the spatial and social location of the settlement, whose layout has characteristic effects on the division of male and female spaces. The local practice of wife seclusion and its significance for producing status will be discussed, as well as the fragility of primary relations and the importance of friendship and neighbourhood in this particular locality. I then proceed to explore the meanings of the term bariki and its local usage as a means of constructing a particular urban community.
THE BARRACKS: GENDERED SPACES
The wives of policemen referred to in this article live on a housing estate called the barikin 'yan sanda (police barracks). The police barracks are located in the south-east of the Old City, close to the city wall. The city wall, although surviving today only...