Paper long abstract:

This paper starts off from the observation that while the mobility of people is often related to the development and aspiration of upward social mobility, this exploration often lacks the inclusion of a perspective on the mobility of institutions. Most studies in Africa that explore different forms of mobility tend to highlight the mobility of individuals, their networks and circulation of knowledge and imaginaries in view of how they may, or may not, come together in reaching a better position in life and a higher status on the social ladder. This paper aims to draw attention to the geographical and social mobility of institutions, and how these may interrelate. This perspective is of particular relevance to the religious domain in Africa where institutions such as transnational churches, demonstrate a knowing-how of institutional mobility in moving across geographical borders, but where the question as to how they have been able in the process to climb the social ladder has received much less attention. Furthermore, this question as to how such religious institutions produce, foster and imagine upward social movement can also be fruitfully raised in relation to some cultural institutions, such as marriage, that have great significance for the combined processes of geographical and social mobility. This paper explores how in the Botswana context transnational Pentecostal churches not only have developed a know-how on how to place themselves higher on the social ladder of status, respect and successfulness in this society, but also perceive of the institution of marriage as an institution that should be 'uplifted'. It thus becomes a target of developing an aspirational know-how of how this upliftment can and should be reached. In so doing, this paper focuses on how the Pentecostals in Botswana develop understandings of institutional social mobility in multifaceted ways.